Shadow AI exposes management fears of missing out
I’m going to start this week’s column with a heartfelt ‘thank you’ on behalf of MSPs looking for opportunities in governance, training, licensing and security for AI to those senior decision-makers who have been busy creating them.
According to research from TrustedTech, a whopping 70% of UK respondents said AI tools were having a positive impact on team performance. More than a half (54%) claimed to save at least three hours a week using AI, while 27% said they saved five or more hours weekly.
So there you have it, AI is working after all.
But the global research pointed to a slightly more disturbing pattern where nearly half (48%) of global respondents admitted to using unapproved AI tools at work. Worse still, 65% of senior decision-makers said they used unapproved AI tools at work, more than double the rate of employees below the decision-maker level.
The research found more than three-quarters (77%) of employees accepted that using AI without approval carried security or data privacy risks, and 56% of decision-makers admitted they were concerned about employees using shadow AI.
Rightly so, although their concerns were slightly undermined by the fact that decision-makers, by their own admission, were guilty of using shadow AI far more than regular employees.
Personal responsibility, collective failure
Speaking to Channel Insider, TrustedTech’s vice president Andy Nolan of technology, said: “It’s just crazy that the people who are responsible for crafting the policies for AI in their organisations are the ones who are breaking it.”
He added that going ahead with using shadow AI despite awareness of the security risks was “really, really crazy to me”. Nolan theorised that it was down to a “fear of being left behind. If I don’t use this, someone else is going to. They’re gonna get their work done twice, three times, four times as fast as me, and I’m gonna look bad”.
This isn’t exactly new. We’ve been here before, of course, with shadow adoption of cloud-based apps, although there was an impression at the time that it was driven by employees rather than managers.
Fear of being left behind is a powerful motivator for taking risks, of course. There’s nothing new about that either.
The good news from a channel perspective is that partners have the opportunity to, once again, help tidy up the mess created from the ramshackle, ad hoc adoption of the latest must-have technology.
As TrustedTech’s founder told Channel Insider: “This isn’t about stopping AI adoption, it’s about bringing structure to something that’s already happening. Companies need visibility into how AI is being used across every level of the organisation, especially at the leadership level, where the impact of decisions is the greatest.”
Why am I reminded of that old Bob Dylan line: “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is”?
Well, it’s probably rude to point fingers at who might have created the febrile environment where decision-makers and employees felt almost compelled to use AI technology without due regard to issues like governance, training, licensing and security. It’s just that it keeps happening on such a regular basis nowadays. It’s almost like creating the conditions where your product goes viral under the radar is a highly effective way of seeding it into the enterprise.
Equally fortunate for everyone is that there are channel partners who can help put things right afterwards. Everybody wins.
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