Bosses struggle to police workers' use of AI

Staff are adopting large language models faster than companies can issue guidelines on how to do so.

- Stephanie Stacey

Matt had a secret helping hand when he started his new job at a pharmaceutical company in September.

The 27-year-old researcher, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, was able to keep up with his more experienced colleagues by turning to OpenAI's ChatGPT to write the code they needed for their work.

"Part of it was sheer laziness. Part of it was genuinely believing it could make my work better and more accurate," he says.

Matt still does not know for sure whether this was allowed. His bosses had not explicitly prohibited him from accessing generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, but neither had they encouraged him to do so - or laid down any specific guidelines on what uses of the technology might be appropriate.

"I couldn't see a reason why it should be a problem, but I still felt embarrassed," he says. "I didn't want to admit to using shortcuts."

Employers have been scrambling to keep up as workers adopt generative AI at a much faster pace than corporate policies are written. An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found nearly a quarter of the US workforce was already using the technology weekly, rising closer to 50 percent in the software and financial industries. Most of these users were turning to tools such as ChatGPT to help with writing and research, often as an alternative to Google, as well as using it as a translation tool or coding assistant.

But researchers warn that much of this early adoption has been happening in the shadows, as workers chart their own paths in the absence of clear corporate guidelines, comprehensive training or cyber-security protection. By September, almost two years after the launch of ChatGPT, fewer than half of the executives surveyed by US employment law firm Littler said their organizations had brought in rules on how employees should use generative AI.