AI in the Indianapolis Workplace – Navigating the Benefits and Risks ofArtificial Intelligence for Local Businesses
Love it or hate it, artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday work for Indianapolis businesses. More and more, local teams are presented with AI-powered tools and resources. Some great. Some not as helpful.
Whatever your position on artificial intelligence as a whole, it is nevertheless a new force that Indy businesses of all sizes, big and small, must evaluate for potential risks, potential benefits, and practical ways Indianapolis small businesses can build real ROI.
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The potential to automate the mundane
Artificial intelligence presents an incredible opportunity for workers by saving time and helping its users be more productive, solve problems more quickly, and automate workflows, giving them more time to focus on tasks and areas that would better serve your business and brand.
I have personally found it beneficial in a variety of scenarios and believe that it can be used in a way that complements an employee's skills, resulting in greater productivity and less time spent on more menial tasks.
There is a distinction to be made, however, between vendor-led hype and real-world benefits for your business, and the potential to generate an actual return on investment.
In order to navigate the subject well, we need to take a level-headed look at both the possible benefits and risks your Indianapolis business may face from the growing use of AI in the workplace, whether your business intends to implement it or not.
Real world benefits
Artificial intelligence as a whole opens up a brand new world of possibilities, both for businesses and their employees. It's already helping businesses and users speed up work, get more done, be more productive and grow in ways we wouldn't have thought possible only a few years ago.
In my own usage, I've found that to be valid, with caveats. While it has the potential to help businesses grow across the board, I've found it particularly helpful for Indianapolis organizations in a few key areas:
Digesting large amounts of data
- Quickly digesting large chunks of data. Creating summaries of long documents, easily generating meeting notes, and organizing information into digestible pieces.
- Speeding up research. AI tools make it incredibly easy to surface huge amounts of information on a topic very quickly.
- Automation of routine tasks. Building templates, checklists and executing repetitive tasks.
As AI advances, the ways in which it can help us grow our businesses and brands and make us more efficient will as well. I've been continually impressed by the ability of several AI tools to take a large chunk of information, like a PDF, and respond to queries about that information with surprising accuracy.
For Indianapolis businesses using Microsoft 365, Microsoft's Facilitator in Teams can be especially helpful for taking meeting notes on the fly and generating a running list of action items while allowing me to focus on the meeting itself instead of having to pause to take notes.
Or imagine a scenario in which you've been out of the office for an extended period and come back to a long, 40-message email thread. AI can quickly summarize the high points to get you up to speed.
Used well, AI is a great antidote to staring at a wall of text. Though it's important to remember that it's not perfect. So always take summaries with a grain of salt.
An always-ready research tool
One of my hobbies is learning about ancient history and reading through old texts. As you can imagine, there's a lot to study!
I've often enjoyed using a variety of tools in my spare time to quickly dive in to areas of history that interest me, and I've been very impressed by the ability of tools like Copilot to research claims, uncover facts I didn't know and explore new avenues for research.
Whether for brainstorming, problem solving or general ideation, AI tools can be incredibly helpful if used well.
Speeding up routine tasks
AI is incredibly good at learning and automating repetitive tasks. Instead of staring for hours at a blank page, AI can help you quickly draft boilerplate messages and content (like a job description for a new hire), proofread new and existing content before it gets sent out, and create standardized, repeatable workflows.
I believe this will be one of the key strengths of AI in business over the next several years, as businesses depend more on AI tools to handle repetitive tasks, leaving the more intricate and perhaps more fulfilling work to humans like you and me.
Just where AI fits for you and your team depends on your needs and pain points. If you're evaluating AI consulting or managed IT services in Indianapolis, we'd love to discuss how a local Indianapolis IT partner might help you implement AI securely and productively.
Real world risks
But while the benefits of artificial intelligence are real and to be celebrated, t's equally important that we understand some of the drawbacks that come with the technology.
In particular, Indianapolis business leaders and IT teams need to be aware of four key areas of AI and cybersecurity risk.
- Shadow AI. The unauthorized use of AI tools by employees.
- Inadvertent model training. Usage of some AI tools is used to train them further. This is typically disabled for business-grade accounts but absolutely is the case for consumer-level subscriptions for Grok, ChatGPT and others.
Understanding these risks will help prepare you and your team to meet the rising challenges of artificial intelligence and better determine how or if to implement it in your organization.
The growing risk of "Shadow AI"
Even if you do not have an official plan for rolling out AI powered tools and experiences, odds are good that your employees are already experimenting with them. Tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Grok and Copilot are more and more becoming household names. And I've found the number of people, even non-tech-savvy individuals who have not used one or more of these tools is shrinking by the day.
A recent Deloitte survey found that nearly a third of AI users have used AI for work without their employers' knowledge. In other words, one out of every three AI users admitted to feeding job-related information into an AI tool to assist with or generate content for his or her job.
This is commonly referred to as "Shadow AI."
External AI tools exist outside the purview of a company and cannot be monitored, controlled or disabled by an employer, leaving a company powerless to determine how it is or is not used with company confidential information.
For Indianapolis companies and nonprofits, the use of shadow AI introduces numerous risks, including but not limited to data breaches, intellectual property loss and compliance violations. All of which can cost your business time and money.
Training with company data
AI models gained their capabilities by ingesting large amounts of training data. Books. Articles. Videos. Magazines. Blog posts. But what some may not realize is that they also learn from their users' interactions.
ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini and many others explicitly state that they can and do use user chats and interactions in the training of their models, depending on subscription type. Business and enterprise subscriptions are usually exempted.
Non-business and non-enterprise users can sometimes opt out of this training, but whether or not that opt out is possible depends on the tool.
This is another reason why shadow AI is a concern. Most users using unauthorized AI tools are doing so with non-business and non-enterprise accounts, most commonly free or individual subscriptions which absolutely can be and are used for the training of various AI models.
That means when an employee uses ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok and enters company confidential data, odds are good that that information is being used to train those tools.
Why we recommend Microsoft 365 Copilot for Indianapolis businesses
- AI hallucinations. AI tools are not omniscient and can be wrong in some of the most amusing and frustrating ways.
- Agent scope creep. Some agents can "use" a computer like a human but have the potential toaccess data and tools beyond set scopes.
For that reason, we strongly recommend and encourage the use of Microsoft's own Copilot AI toolset which is built on the same core technologies as ChatGPT and Gemini but with key advantages.
For businesses, Copilot offers two very important benefits.
First, it features strong integration with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite. Need assistance with an Excel spreadsheet? Want a quick starter draft in Word? Copilot can do that. All without having to leave your Microsoft environment. Unlike ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, Copilot is uniquely positioned to interface and work with your data.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this all happens without having to rely on an external tool. When working with company confidential data, it's important to use and encourage employees to use tools that won't send or share that data externally. Because Copilot operates within the purview of your Microsoft 365 tenant, employees can make use of it without fear of data exfiltration.
From a security and auditing standpoint, this is significantly more desirable than reliance on external tools. For two reasons.
The risk of AI hallucination
Despite what some may claim, no AI tool is perfect. Sometimes they can be incorrect in rather humorous ways. Artificial intelligence has the potential to speed up a number of workflows in your business and save your employees time, but it is vital to remember to take its output with a grain of salt.
Artificial intelligence tools are, at best, very good prediction machines. They are able to predict the next most-likely-correct answer in response to a prompt, but they are not omniscient and need consistent guidance and fact checking in order to be used wisely.
I have personally encountered a number of humorous but incorrect responses from various tools, including Grok, ChatGPT, and Gemini. While they are, in my opinion, a net positive if used well, the potential exists for incorrect data to be incorporated into users' work if every output is taken at face value and uncritically.
As a general rule, it is best to ensure that any output by or from an AI tool is thoroughly inspected and validated before being relied upon for business purposes or sent to a client.
The age of agents
The AI tools of today go far beyond the AI tools of just a few years ago. No longer are they confined to simple chat boxes and prompts and replies. Some of the more advanced AI tools are able to take control of a computer and act on behalf of a user, doing just about anything that human users could do.
The advantages to that sort of technology are obvious, and the potential to save time is hard to overstate. But with that advancement comes very real risk that ought to be understood. When an agent, whether that's Grok, Claude, Codex, Grok Bot or any other, acts on behalf of a user, it has access to significant amounts of data. Just what an agent can see and what it can do with the data it sees can be controlled to a degree.
- Users are given access to a capable, powerful AI toolset that further empowers their work.
- Copilot does not train on users' interactions or data.
However it should be noted that there have been concerns about some of these agents not respecting and in fact exceeding defined permissions or acting on data in unexpected and undesirable ways.
Understand the tools available
Even if you do not presently intend to offer or implement AI tools in your business, I encourage you to seek at least a passing understanding of current AI tools. Whether we love AI or hate AI, it is indeed here to stay, and we need to understand how, or if, it should play a role in our day to day operations.
I believe it's important to at least be conversant with the subject of artificial intelligence as it becomes more and more integrated into the business world. Certainly there's no rule that says your business must implement AI or AI tools. But it's never a bad idea to be aware of what's available.
Developing clear policies
We believe it's increasingly important for Indianapolis businesses and nonprofit organizations of all sizes to begin thinking through and defining clear policies and expectations surrounding the use of AI tools in their organizations. Artificial intelligence has the potential to be a great asset for you and your team, but it's not without its risks.
As the technology advances, and it's advancing quickly, it will be more and more important for businesses to be ready to meet the question of AI usage in the workplace head on. Will you provide AI tools and training for your users? What policies will you enforce surrounding employee AI usage? How will you protect your data from Shadow AI? These questions, and more, we would love to discuss with you to help you determine what's best for you.
Approaching AI with cautious optimism
We strongly believe in the potential of artificial intelligence to revolutionize businesses both big and small over the next several years. Both the risks and the benefits are considerable, and the subject should be approached with care.
If you're an Indianapolis business leader who isn't sure where to start—or would like a local AI and IT consulting partner to walk through your AI journey with you—let's connect and see what we can build together. Artificial intelligence is a rapidly advancing field, and our Indianapolis AI consulting team is ready to work with you on a secure AI implementation strategy tailored to your Indianapolis organization.
Personally, I'm excited to see where AI goes over the next several years. We're still in the early years of truly usable artificial intelligence, and I believe that in time, it will grow to help us in ways we hadn't imagined possible.
And as someone who grew up watching Star Trek fascinated by the idea of the show's characters talking to a ship's computer, I'll always think it's fun that we can now do exactly that.
Minus the space ship part. For now.
