16.05.2025

Don't just let AI use in the company run its course

Many office workers use AI tools independently, often without the knowledge of their employers, which leads to unverified work results and risks. The IMC Krems study shows that mere guidelines are not enough - companies need to drive forward targeted promotion, know-how transfer and awareness-raising.

Unsplash.com / Igor Omilaev

After shadow IT comes shadow AI if a company does not consciously manage the issue. This is shown by the initial results of a new AI research project at IMC Krems. 274 office workers took part in an AI study at IMC Krems. The results showed that 65% of participants use AI without their employer's knowledge.

Furthermore, every second participant stated that they do not or do not always check the content of AI results. This means that work results are circulated in the company that have not previously been validated for accuracy.

The proportion of employees uploading confidential data to a public AI platform, such as ChatGPT, is not as high. The unreported figure here was 34%.

Is it enough to simply set up a company policy? The study shows: No, that doesn't work. Around 50% of participants stated that they would simply ignore a corresponding company policy.

What this means: As a company, you have to tackle the issue from the ground up. Three things are important here:

1) Promote the use of AI and make it clear that the use of AI is desired.

2) Provide employees with the necessary expertise. The House of Digitalisation offers half-day workshops for this purpose.

3) And at the same time sensitise them to the correct use of AI. This should be done as part of the know-how transfer.

The IMC Krems research project also offers support for AI utilisation and AI transformation. Companies can participate directly here. The focus is on SMEs and knowledge work. The aim is to identify the most important and most worthwhile AI use cases. How can expenditure be avoided or costs saved through AI? Which work tasks can be significantly accelerated by AI? The research project will provide more and more answers to these questions.

Contact persons for the research project are the IMC professors: Michael Bartz, michael.bartz@imc.ac.at and Doris Berger-Grabner doris.grabner@imc.ac.at

More information about the project: https://newworldofwork.wordpress.com/

ORF report: https://noe.orf.at/stories/3305045/

Photo Credits: https://unsplash.com/de/@omilaev