Generative AI technology, such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, DALL-E and more, has the potential to revolutionize industries and enhance business processes, but it also comes with risks and ethical considerations that must be carefully addressed. To ensure responsible and effective use of generative AI within your organization, it is crucial to establish a clear policy that outlines guidelines for its implementation.
Key Takeaways:
- An AI policy should include information about the risks users face, including inaccurate outputs and biased information
- Information entered into a generative AI tool should be heavily monitored and limited to ensure proprietary information, either your business’s or your customers, remains protected
- Certain industries, such as finance, health care and the legal field, must maintain extra vigilance about data entered into generative AI tools to remain in compliance with regulations
Generative AI is a new, disruptive technology that can serve a variety of purposes for users, making it an attractive new tool for businesses in numerous industries. It can be used to draft written content, videos, images and more. It can also analyze datasets and present its findings. While these advances can assist businesses in improving productivity, some risks need to be mitigated. Creating an AI policy for your business can help set guidelines on acceptable uses of generative AI, safeguard your data privacy and intellectual property, impose quality standards and keep you in compliance with regulations or ethical benchmarks.
Set Benchmarks for Acceptable AI Usage
When is it ok for employees to use generative AI tools? What does responsible usage of these tools look like for your organization? These should be the first questions you ask to help determine the best guidelines to set for your employees. Perhaps you’ll decide that anything that goes directly to customers or clients, such as communications or advertisements, shouldn’t be created by AI tools. Clearly state in the policy when, where and how these tools can be used. Keep your business’s core values in mind when determining these guardrails.
Maintain Quality Standards
You should also keep quality in mind when devising your AI standards. Just because you’re able to generate an image or video with AI doesn’t mean that the content it creates will hold up to your organization’s standards. Include a review process in your policy to keep low-quality content from being associated with your brand.
An AI policy should also include a warning for employees about the potential risks of using these tools, including the possibility of false or biased outputs. Remind employees to remain vigilant, to double-check the answers or solutions the AI tool provides. AI isn’t a replacement for humans, it’s a tool that should add to their efficiency.
Secure Your Data Privacy and Intellectual Property
One key aspect of a generative AI policy is establishing parameters for data privacy and security. Given the sensitive nature of information processed by AI systems, organizations must prioritize safeguarding proprietary data. Some generative AI tools like ChatGPT gather information input by users and help train the model for future uses.
If an employee includes a client’s private information as part of a dataset they input into ChatGPT for analysis, that could potentially compromise the client’s information. You could also experience a similar scenario where an employee inadvertently included confidential or proprietary information about your business in a prompt.
Create strong controls around what information can and can’t be entered into these tools to protect not only your own organization’s private data or intellectual property but that of your clients or customers. Include consequences for doing so to drive home the importance of this policy.
Not all AI tools are the same. Unlike ChatGPT, Bard or other publicly available AI models, Microsoft has services that don’t use your data for training purposes, keeping your data secure and isolated within your personal silo. Azure OpenAI can be used by organizations that want to use generative AI technologies to answer questions they have regarding potentially sensitive datasets. Working with an experienced Microsoft partner can help your organization centralize your data, securing it so it can be indexed and searched by a generative model so it can answer your questions.
Stay Compliant with Industry Regulations
Some industries, such as health care, finance and legal, routinely handle sensitive information and are subject to regulations and compliance requirements. If there are specific regulations your business must follow to remain in compliance with the law, be sure to review those statutes and include them in the policy for reference.
Anders Technology works with organizations to devise strategies surrounding AI to increase your business’s productivity and efficiency using automation. To learn more about how AI can help your company, request a meeting below.
