This article is part of Lifehacker's “Living with AI” series. We explore the current state of AI, explain how it's helping us (and how it's not helping us), and evaluate where this revolutionary technology is headed next. Learn more.
As soon as ChatGPT is released in late 2022, the world began debating how and when to use it. Is it ethical to use generative AI in the workplace? Is it “cheating”? Or are we simply witnessing the next big technological revolution? Will everyone embrace it or get left behind?
Like it or not, AI is now a part of the job
AI, like anything else, is first a tool, and tools help us accomplish more than we could on our own. (My job is literally impossible without a computer.) In that respect, there's nothing wrong, in theory, with using AI to boost productivity. In fact, some work apps are fully riding the AI wave. Just look at Microsoft. The company has basically conquered what “computing at work” means, adding AI capabilities directly into its products.
Over the last year, the company's AI-assisted tool, Copilot, has been featured across the Microsoft 365 suite, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams, and more. Think of it like the old Clippy, but much more useful. In Teams, you can ask the bot to summarize your meeting notes. In Word, you can have the AI create a business proposal based on your bullet points and ask it to tighten up a particular paragraph you don't like. In Excel, you can ask Copilot to analyze and model your data. In PowerPoint, you can ask it to create an entire slideshow based on your prompts.
These tools don't just exist; they are being actively created by the companies that make our work possible, and their use is It was recommended. This reminds me of how Microsoft marketed Excel in 1990. The ads touted spreadsheets as time-consuming, rigid, and feature-less, but with Excel you can create a functioning presentation while you're in an elevator. We don't see that as “cheating.” teeth work.
Using AI intelligently is the same thing. Just as Excel in the 1990s extrapolated data into cells you didn't create, Excel in 2023 answers questions about your data and executes commands you give it in normal language, not formulas or functions. It is a tool.
What kind of work is it? should not do What do you use AI for?
Of course, there is room to cross ethical lines here too. Tools can be used to make your job better, but they can also be used to cheat. If you use the internet to hire other people to do work for you and then pass that work off as your own, that's not using tools to make your job better. That's wrong. The same goes for if you just let Copilot or ChatGPT do the entire job for you.
You should also consider your own company guidelines when it comes to using AI and external technology. Given the rise of AI over the past year and a half or so, your organization may already have these rules in place. Your company may allow the use of AI tools within reason, which is great. But if your company determines that AI can't be used for work, Any If it is for work purposes, we recommend logging out of ChatGPT during business hours.
But let’s be realistic. Your company probably If you're using AI tools responsibly, you're not going to know if you're using them. The bigger issue here is privacy and confidentiality, which is something not enough people consider when using AI in general.
Simply put, generative AI tools: Huge Although AI processes large amounts of data, it is far from perfect, and the more data the system processes, the more room there is for improvement. you Unless the service allows you to explicitly opt out of this training, the AI system is trained based on every prompt you type in. When you ask Copilot to help you compose an email, Copilot captures the entire interaction, from their reactions to your responses to the content of the email itself.
Therefore, as a rule of thumb, Never give confidential or sensitive information to AIAn easy way to avoid trouble is to treat the AI the same as you would your work email. Only share information with it that you would be comfortable emailing to a colleague, such as ChatGPT. After all, your emails may one day become public. Would you be comfortable with the world seeing what you say? If so, it's OK to share it with the AI. If not, keep it away from the robots.
If the service gives you the choice, opt out of this training. If you opt out, your interactions with the AI will not be used to improve the service, and your previous chats may be deleted from the servers after a certain period of time. Still, you should never share personal or corporate data with an AI chatbot. It's possible that developers store more data than we realize and get hacked, putting your work data at risk.
