66% of Australian workers using Gen AI aren’t disclosing it, here’s why that’s a problem

A recent report from the Deloitte AI Institute has found that a large number of employees are using generative AI in the workplace… without telling their bosses.

It’s no surprise that the use of generative AI by the mainstream population is on the rise. The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 opened the floodgates for competitors and therefore easy access to these types of tools.

Social media has also helped adoption, with TikTok in particular providing a plethora of content showing people how to use generative AI to automate tasks for them — from research, to writing to even coding.

So it’s unsurprising that workers began experimenting and implementing generative AI into their own workdays.

The problem is that a lot of workers don’t seem to be disclosing their use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools.

According to Deloitte’s Gen AI survey, 32% of the 2000 employees surveyed are using some kind of Gen AI for work tasks. Two-thirds of these respondents (so around 20% of all those surveyed) admitted their managers probably don’t know about it.

The same study revealed only 9.5% of large Australian businesses and 1.4% of SMEs have officially adopted AI into their businesses

But this is also not the first time we’ve come across a similar statistic. Back in March, a survey by Fishbowl revealed that 68% of respondents were using Gen AI for work without informing their organisation.

Why this is a problem for businesses

While there has been a great deal of discussions around how Gen AI can be used to cut down on admin time and allow people to focus on more high-level tasks — that could also be perceived as a way for organisations to sell in AI so they can then use it to replace human jobs.

With that fear circulating, it’s not surprising that some workers may not want to out themselves for automating part of their work.

But regardless of the motivation, it is a problem.

According to the same report, 70% of Australian businesses are yet to break ground on preparing for Gen AI implementation. In fact, Australia ranked second-last out of 14 leading economies when it comes to Gen AI deployment.

Combining this lack of corporate readiness with employees potentially feeding company data into public chatbots and large language models (LLMs) — it’s a recipe for disaster.

We already saw this in May when Samsung banned employees from using ChatGPT after sensitive internal source code was uploaded to the chatbot.

The current messy approach by most Australian businesses to generative AI is extremely risky. And that’s before you even take into account what other organisations in your supply chain might be doing in the space when there is little to no oversight.

The argument for responsible AI adoption in businesses

While we’re in this fledgling stage of Generative AI adoption, businesses have to be both open-minded as well as guarded. It’s unlikely to be going away anytime soon, which means that if you’re thinking about using generative AI, or you suspect your staff may be, it’s worth implementing an AI policy.

Because it’s not actually as simple as bringing in chatbots to automate tasks for you. The potential security risks, bill shock (it’s not all cost-saving despite popular rhetoric), biases and AI hallucinations are still very real.

And while there are sample standards and ethical practices out there to help guide organisations, we’re still years behind when it comes to necessary legislation.

During these early years, while most people are still learning and making mistakes, it’s imperative to have open communication and transparency within businesses to ensure that if AI is being implemented, it’s being done responsibly.

And not just to protect the organisation, but the people that make it run every day.

This story has been updated to more clearly express the percentage of respondents admitting using Gen AI at work.