It’s hard to believe the COVID19 pandemic started 5 years ago, a new devastating virus, unprecedented lockdowns and high-speed vaccine development so recent. Whilst many live with the loss of loved ones or long-term effects, the vast majority enjoy a new normal. 

Many of us have a hybrid working pattern, that wasn’t on offer pre-pandemic. There remain challenges, productivity amongst them, but it’s a case of that was then, this is now. 

Since the explosion of ChatGPT into the public mindset in 2022, AI and generative AI, in particular, has continued to march into our organisations, workflows and applications – no longer on the sidelines, we see the technology being put to use in more and more aspects of our working lives.

That’s a challenge, our governance is typically geared towards our understanding of more traditional data processing, someone holds our records, and they execute some code over those records. We understand the questions to ask, but is this sufficient in the works of AI? Are our application vendors running modems on our behalf or are they passing to third parties? What is that AI doing with the PII within that dataset? 

Take, for example, using AI to transcribe minutes from a management meeting. Discussions on topics including finance, customers and employees are common. Is that appropriate to be summarised, potentially by a cool new tool that’s passing some analysis off to third parties? Now we’re not just talking about potential PII, but commercially sensitive information too.

Before we reach for the “No” button; let’s think about the potential gains and the productivity these tools bring; then let’s make sure our governance and accompanying guidance are up to the challenge. After all, that was then, this is now.

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