Berlin-based business consultant Matt and his colleague were among the first at their workplace to discover ChatGPT, mere weeks after its release. He says the chatbot transformed their workdays overnight. “It was like discovering a video game cheat,” says Matt. “I asked a really technical question from my PhD thesis, and it provided an answer that no one would be able to find without consulting people with very specific expertise. I knew it would be a game changer.”
Day-to-day tasks in his fast-paced environment – such as researching scientific topics, gathering sources and producing thorough presentations to clients – suddenly became a breeze. The only catch: Matt and his colleague had to keep their use of ChatGPT a closely guarded secret. They accessed the tool covertly, mostly on working-from-home days.
“We had a significant competitive advantage against our colleagues – our output was so much faster and they couldn’t comprehend how. Our manager was very impressed and spoke about our performance with senior management,” he says.
Whether the technology is explicitly banned, highly frowned upon or giving some workers a covert leg up, some employees are searching for ways to keep using generative AI tools discreetly. The technology is increasingly becoming an employee backchannel: in a February 2023 study by professional social network Fishbowl, 68% of 5,067 respondents who used AI at work said they don’t disclose usage to their bosses.
Even in instances without workplace bans, employees may still want to keep their use of AI hidden, or at least guarded, from peers. “We don’t have norms established around AI yet – it can initially look like you’re conceding you’re not actually that good at your job if the machine is doing many of your tasks,” says Johnson. “It’s natural that people would want to conceal that.”
As a result, forums are popping up for workers to swap strategies for keeping a low profile. In communities like Reddit, many people seek methods of secretly circumventing workplace bans, either through high-tech solutions (integrating ChatGPT into a native app disguised as a workplace tool) or rudimentary ones to obscure usage (adding a privacy screen, or discreetly accessing the technology on their personal phone at their desk).
That’s merely a logistics problem.
The far greater issues is the fact that the AI is an external system with no guarantees of confidentiality or quality. You’re giving this system private business and technical information and getting who-knows-what in return.
Your company and your employees are still the ones on the hook for the final product so everything AI gives you still needs to be verified and vetted by people who know what they’re doing (if you’re not a complete cowboy farm).
Assuming it turns out ok you’ve not saved as much time and resources as you think, and you’ve still given away private information.
If you don’t think someone out there is going through all the private emails and proprietary code submitted to AI you’re being very naive.