Australian businesses face increasing risks as artificial intelligence tools rapidly become more prevalent in the workplace, senior technology executives have warned. The comments come as organizations mark AI Appreciation Day amid growing concerns about hidden and uncontrolled uses of the technology.
The use of generative AI and automation tools is rapidly moving from experimentation to everyday workflows across a variety of disciplines. Employees are now using AI to draft documents, write code, summarize information, and support customer engagement.
Ben Mudie, field CTO for Asia Pacific and Japan at cybersecurity company Tenable, said the pace of adoption is outpacing many organizations’ ability to manage risk. He pointed to research showing widespread unauthorized use of public AI services and a growing footprint of “shadow AI” largely invisible to boards.
Most Australian workers are now using AI in the workplace, according to research from Salesforce, Melbourne Business School and Employment Hero. Many do this without formal authorization, and some enter sensitive or personal data into external tools outside the company’s control.
“AI Appreciation Day can’t just be a celebration of productivity. It needs to be a reality check for Australian businesses on how they manage risk. What defines this moment is the speed of AI adoption. Two in three Australian workers are already in the workplace. Timelines that used to take days are collapsing into seconds. But until results catch up, convenience will always win, and that’s starting to happen at Melbourne’s Business School. ‘s 2025 Global AI Trust Survey found that 60 per cent of Australian workers hid their use of AI from their employers, and 48 per cent admitted to breaching company policy by entering sensitive data into public AI tools.A separate study published this month by Employment Hero found that one in three Australian workers hid their use of AI from their employers. This is the same problem that the OAIC is now actively testing under privacy law. This is not an argument that the benefits of AI are real, even though we spent years trying to eliminate that exposure a decade ago. It’s a good time to ask whether it’s a day of gratitude, because it’s really everyone in the organization who is taking that risk,” Mudie said.
Mudie drew parallels with the early stages of cloud adoption. Many companies moved quickly to hosted infrastructure and software without clear guardrails, then spent years identifying data flows, enforcing access, and refining security controls.
Regulators are starting to focus more on how organizations manage the information flowing into AI tools. The Australian Information Commissioner’s Office is testing what constitutes “reasonable steps” under the Privacy Act when large-scale language models and third-party AI services process customer and employee data.
While Tenable’s warning focuses on risk ownership and policy enforcement, other companies in the industry emphasize the human and organizational factors that shape the impact of AI.
“AI Appreciation Day shouldn’t really be about AI; it should be about people learning how to work with AI responsibly, creatively, and effectively. Over the past year, AI has gone far beyond experimentation. It’s helping developers write code, supporting customer service teams, empowering knowledge workers, and accelerating decision-making in nearly every industry. But the organizations that see the most value aren’t necessarily using AI They are the ones that have invested in the necessary engineering practices, skills, and governance. As AI becomes embedded into every business function, success will depend less on the sophistication of individual models and more on how efficiently organizations can integrate AI into daily operations, retain human judgment, and deliver transparent and reliable results. It’s about how AI can be combined to solve meaningful problems, improve customer experiences, and create lasting business value. AI doesn’t replace humans, it helps humans achieve results previously impossible,” said Steve Yurisich, Managing Director, Asia, Thoughtworks.
Rather than a proprietary model, Yurisic centered his competitive advantage on engineering discipline, staff training, and clear governance. He said organizations that embed AI into daily processes while keeping human judgment at the center are likely to reap lasting benefits.
Both executives are positioning AI Appreciation Day as an opportunity for reassessment rather than celebration. They describe a situation where experimentation has become mainstream, but where data, security, and responsibility for results remain unclear.
