Creating better gen AI alignment between employers and employees

Digital trust professionals from around the globe, specialising in areas like cybersecurity, IT audit, governance, privacy, and risk management, are expressing concerns about generative AI.

According to Generative AI 2023: An ISACA Pulse Poll, many employees are using generative AI without company policies in place, and few organisations are providing training on the technology. Specifically, only 28% of the organisations surveyed explicitly permitted the use of generative AI, with a mere 10% implementing comprehensive policies, and more than one in four had neither a policy nor plans to establish one. Even without clear guidance, more than 40% of employees were actively using generative AI, while an additional 35% were unsure about its prevalence.

Employees leveraged generative AI for various purposes, including creating written content (65%), increasing productivity (44%), automating repetitive tasks (32%), providing customer service (29%), and improving decision-making (27%).

Jason Lau, Board Director of ISACA and CISO at Crypto.com, said, “Employees are not waiting for permission to explore and leverage generative AI to bring value to their work, and their organisations need to catch up in providing policies, guidance and training to ensure the technology is used appropriately and ethically. With greater alignment between employers and their employees around generative AI, organisations will be able to drive increased understanding of the technology among their teams, gain further benefit from AI, and better protect themselves from related risk.”

Additionally, respondents raised concerns about the ethical implications and risks of generative AI, such as misinformation and disinformation (77%), privacy violations (68%), social engineering (63%), loss of intellectual property (58%), and job displacement and widening of the skills gap (tied at 35%).

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Despite these challenges, respondents also expressed optimism about the potential of generative AI to have a positive impact on their industry, organisations, and careers. The poll found that 80% of respondents believe AI will have a positive or neutral impact on their industry, 81% believe it will have a positive or neutral impact on their organisations, and 82% believe it will have a positive or neutral impact on their careers.