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Management Journal Article hero
Management Journal Article

Bring Your Own AI: How to Balance Risks and Innovation

Banning GenAI tools won’t work. Leaders should set guidelines that let employees experiment: This mitigates risks while opening the door to organizational gains, research shows.
Abstract

Since ChatGPT’s debut in late 2022, employees have continued to find new ways to tap into the power of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). For many individuals, GenAI tools have sped up the capability to create content ranging from text to video. For example, the tools can help people summarize meeting documents, generate ideas, and construct emails. Freely available Gen AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude AI, and GenAI-enabled functionality now embedded in software from the likes of Microsoft and Adobe have fueled the growing use of GenAI tools inside and outside the workplace. Yet with this rise of GenAI comes a new challenge for organizational leaders: the phenomenon of Bring Your Own AI (BYOAI), which occurs when employees use unvetted, publicly available GenAI tools for work.

About the Authors

MIT CENTER FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH (CISR)

Founded in 1974 and grounded in MIT's tradition of combining academic knowledge and practical purpose, MIT CISR helps executives meet the challenge of leading increasingly digital and data-driven organizations. We work directly with digital leaders, executives, and boards to develop our insights. Our consortium forms a global community that comprises more than seventy-five organizations.

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