Bring Your Own AI Risks
Businesses in all sectors want to gain a competitive advantage through artificial intelligence (AI), and senior executives are tasked with ensuring their organizations have the rules and regulations in place to use new technologies safely and effectively.
Day-to-Day Professionals Use AI
While the institution recognizes the power of using AI to drive innovations in all academic areas, Keith Woolley, chief digital and information officer at the University of Bristol, told ZDNET how people in day-to-day roles in teaching, administration, and research are also using emerging technologies.
Bring Your Own AI is a Growing Trend
Other experts also point to BYOAI as a growing trend. A survey by the MIT Center for Information Systems Research suggests the trend occurs when employees use unvetted, publicly available Gen AI tools for work.
Risks Associated with BYOAI
Woolley acknowledged that the stealthy introduction of AI, whether driven by users or vendors, raises significant concerns for his team and the university’s executives. "Bring your own AI is a challenge," he said. "It’s like when you used to see storage appearing on the network from Dropbox and other cloud providers. People thought they could get a credit card and start sharing things, which isn’t great."
Mitigating Risks
So, how should organizations deal with the rise of BYOAI? One approach would be for executives to ban Gen AI. However, MIT’s research suggests business leaders should stay open to Gen AI and provide strong guidance to turn BYOAI into an innovation source.
Key Considerations
- How much failure do we want? Because AI is a guessing engine at the moment, and it’s one of those situations where it will make assumptions based upon the information it’s got. If that information is slightly flawed, you’ll get a slightly flawed answer.
- What services we can offer. We’ve put policy and process around it, but that’s a living document because everything’s changing so fast.
- We are trying to drive change through carefully.
Conclusion
The rise of BYOAI presents significant risks, but with the right approach, organizations can harness its potential. By providing strong guidance and establishing clear policies, businesses can turn BYOAI into an innovation source. As Keith Woolley said, "We’ve been clear that AI is about assisting the workforce, the students, and our researchers, and where practical and possible, automating services."
FAQs
Q: What is BYOAI?
A: BYOAI stands for Bring Your Own AI, a trend where employees use unvetted, publicly available Gen AI tools for work.
Q: What are the risks associated with BYOAI?
A: The risks include data loss, intellectual property leakage, copyright violations, and security breaches.
Q: How can organizations mitigate these risks?
A: By providing strong guidance and establishing clear policies, organizations can turn BYOAI into an innovation source.
Q: What is the future of AI in education?
A: The future of AI in education is likely to be a combination of consuming generative AI as part of the education system, feeding data into existing models, or developing language models as a form of competitive differentiation.
Q: Who is leading the charge in AI adoption?
A: Universities and businesses are leading the charge in AI adoption, with many institutions and organizations embracing AI to drive innovation and stay competitive.
