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ChatGPT and the workplace | Minimising the risk of employee misuse

Written by Derick Maclean on 14 June 2023

Artificial intelligence and natural language processing have seen remarkable advancements in recent years, with ChatGPT, an AI language model, at the forefront of this progress.

While ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionise various aspects of our lives, it’s crucial to understand and address the potential challenges it presents in the workplace.

We have already explored how to address job security worries with your employees and protect your recruitment process from AI interference. In this third installment in our ‘ChatGPT and the workplace’ series, we offer advice what is arguably the foremost concern for employers: employees using ChatGPT in unauthorised or improper ways.

How can we prevent employees misusing ChatGPT?

Improper use of tools such as ChatGPT could present a number of issues for employers. If employees become over-reliant on AI and don’t apply critical thinking, it could lead to the unintentional spread of misinformation, privacy and data security risks, legal and compliance concerns, and issues with clients, amongst other things.

Like most workplace issues, when it comes to employees misusing AI, it is far more prudent to focus on prevention than to deal with the consequences later down the line.

Therefore, as more organisations become aware of and adopt tools such as ChatGPT, it becomes increasingly important for employers to introduce policies that explicitly address the use of AI tools in the workplace and ensure they are used appropriately in a professional setting.

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What should a workplace ChatGPT policy include?

A ChatGPT policy (or broader AI policy) should set out clear guidelines and boundaries for the circumstances in which the use of AI is and isn’t permitted. The context of an employee’s specific role will be crucial in shaping these guidelines.

In crafting your ChatGPT policy, the starting point will be to identify:

  • Tasks or roles where employees might be able to leverage AI to enhance productivity and efficiency, provided appropriate quality measures are in place; and
  • Those where AI assistance might not be appropriate, such as activities involving sensitive data handling, decision-making processes with significant consequences, or tasks requiring human creativity, intuition or critical thinking. For these activities, you may wish to prohibit the use of AI altogether, or impose strict guidelines.

A complaints handler, for instance, might effectively utilise AI to draft initial responses to customers, resulting in significant time savings and increased productivity. Your policy may permit this, though it may be wise to state that employees are expected to thoroughly review and validate any AI-generated responses for accuracy and appropriateness before sending them to ensure the final response aligns with the organisation’s standards and maintains a human touch.

A greater degree of caution might be warranted when it comes to content creators, as AI-generated material could inadvertently include copyrighted works or factual inaccuracies, posing legal and reputational risks for both the employee and the employer. You may wish to allow the use of AI for certain content creation tasks only, or introduce extra vetting procedures such as fact-checking and proofreading to minimise potential problems.

For high-stakes roles, where the potential consequences could be severe, a judicious and meticulous approach should be taken when considering the use of AI tools. Legal advisors, for example, would need to exercise extreme caution when relying on ChatGPT for generating advice to clients or preparing court submissions, as highlighted by a recent case in which a lawyer submitted court documents which included AI-generated, fictitious case law. The lawyer had assumed the AI’s output to be entirely factual and had failed to recognise its potential for errors.

Indeed, it is important to keep in mind that ChatGPT relies on the data it has been trained on, which may not always be up to date or entirely accurate. As such, it is essential for employers to explicitly communicate in their policies that AI is fallible and should not be assumed to be true or reliable. To this end, it is a good idea to reinforce your policy through training to help employees understand the limitations of AI and exercise critical judgment when utilising AI-generated content.

By carefully defining these parameters through policies and other communications, and reinforcing them in practice, employers can promote a culture of responsible and effective AI use while mitigating potential risks and liabilities.

As well as defining where AI should and should not be used, your policy should also:

  • Consider data protection and the security of personal and confidential company information.
  • Set out your expectations regarding originality and intellectual honesty.
  • Be clear about the consequences of not complying with your company’s rules on AI use.

If employees violate the policy by using ChatGPT in authorised ways or fail to properly vet AI-generated work, then disciplinary action could follow, in the usual manner. 

Can we ban ChatGPT in the workplace?

Given the potential for issues, you might be asking yourself, “wouldn’t it just be easier to ban AI tools in the workplace?”

Indeed, many well-known businesses are reported to have banned the use of ChatGPT in the workplace, including Apple and Samsung, over fears of employees inadvertently leaking sensitive commercial data.  

However, before making a decision on an outright ban on ChatGPT, employers should consider whether there could be benefits in its use in certain areas of their business. While caution is warranted, failure to at least explore the potential benefits of AI risks employers ‘missing the boat’ with this fast-moving technology and being left behind by their competitors.  

If, upon careful deliberation, you are adamant that you do not want to allow the use of ChatGPT in your workplace, or in specific areas of it, then you should make this clear in a policy statement issued to all relevant employees, indicating the potential consequences for non-compliance. Again, it is vital that employers take steps to ensure that all employees are aware of, and understand, the company’s position on this. 

Final thoughts

Like any evolution to the workplace, such as hybrid working, it’s only natural that employers will have concerns about employees pushing the boundaries. However, as many will have discovered in the case of hybrid working, with proper management and defined parameters, these changes can be positive.

The key is to be proactive – implement clear policies, provide adequate training and engage in open conversation with your employees. By doing so, and striking the right balance between AI and human expertise, employers can mitigate the risks associated with improper AI use and maximise the benefits of AI on the workplace.

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