5 Crucial Ways You Need To Stay Smart, Safe, and Ethical To Level-up Your AI Utilization.

Peter Michael
Jul 1
5 min read

This article discusses the five crucial ways you can use to stay smart, safe and ethical to level-up your AI utilization at your job and for your company.

AI can help you work faster and think clearer — but it can also make mistakes at scale. Here’s how to use it wisely, especially when high-level info is on the line.

5 Crucial Ways You Need To Stay Smart, Safe, and Ethical To Level-up Your AI Utilization.

This very topic was inspired by my day to day as a writer. I have to admit that I do use AI tools to assist me (but not complete generate content) in my writing to kick-start an idea, to structure a post or a blog that aligns with the angle I’m coming from, or simply to be my critique. However, my early days were less than perfect. Content generated would miss the target so hard I would get in some serious trouble. That’s going to end for you today. Hopefully, before it begins.

🖥️ The New Normal: AI Is in the Room With You.

Let’s say you’re drafting a contract, preparing a board report, or summarizing a confidential meeting. You’re short on time, so you open ChatGPT, Notion AI, or Copilot to get a jumpstart. It helps, right? Fast, efficient, even articulate. But here’s the thing:

You’re not just speeding up your work — you’re reshaping how decisions get made, information is handled, and people are represented.

These tools are incredibly useful. But they don’t understand context. They don’t know what’s confidential. And they don’t grasp the nuance of office politics, client sensitivities, or regulatory pressure. All this, let alone how you feel on the sensitivity of the content.

That means using AI well isn’t just about being efficient. It’s about being responsible.

⚠️ When Smart Tools Become Risky Shortcuts.

It’s easy to forget how much trust is embedded in our day-to-day work — especially if your role gives you access to financial data, HR records, strategic plans, or client IP. AI doesn’t distinguish between “public” and “private” unless you tell it to.

And if you’re not careful? Things can go wrong quickly.

Real risks include:

Leaking confidential data by pasting it into AI prompts,
Relying on AI-generated facts that are incorrect, outdated, or fabricated (known as “hallucinations”),
Letting bias sneak in through seemingly objective content suggestions or summaries based on it’s assumed read of you.

These aren’t edge cases. They’re happening every day in inboxes, Slack messages, and project decks around the world.

🔑 The Power — and Responsibility — of Access.

If you’re someone with high-level access at work — executives, managers, legal teams, finance, HR, marketing, and even IT — you have more than tools at your disposal. You have leverage. That means:

You may be setting the tone for how your AI is used by yourself or with the team,
You may be training the model (intentionally or not) with sensitive internal data,
You may be making decisions based on AI-generated insight without fully vetting the source.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use AI. It means you should use it with eyes wide open. Because when the stakes are high, AI isn’t just helpful — it can also be harmful.

✅ A Smarter Way to Use AI at Work (Without the Risk).

So how do you keep AI useful without opening the door to privacy issues, bias, or automation errors?

Here’s your quick but essential framework:

1. Assume Anything You Type Into AI Is Public.

Unless you’re using an enterprise-secured system with clear data privacy agreements (e.g. Microsoft Copilot under your company domain), treat every prompt as potentially visible.

📌 That means: never paste sensitive data into “free” AI tools — client details, personnel issues, budget plans, IP, or legal conversations. All information gathered will be used for training (unless otherwise declared by the user if there is an option to opt out). Though not exposed directly, some questions asked may prompt classified information to be leaked unintentionally.

2. Always Validate AI-Generated Info.

AI is trained on a mix of sources — some reputable, some not. It’s not always current, and it sometimes just makes stuff up. Really, I’m glad that they are doing so much better now then they did awhile ago because the facts are more in-tract now, though not perfect.

📌 Always cross-check AI-generated research, statistics, legal language, or claims. Use it as a starting point, not a final source.

3. Use AI for Drafting, Not Deciding.

Let AI help you brainstorm, outline, or simplify — but do not outsource your judgment. You still need to:

Add context
Review tone
Ensure accuracy
Decide what’s appropriate

Especially when the communication is high-impact, emotionally sensitive, or public-facing.

4. Keep an Audit Trail.

If you’re using AI to help write reports, process information, or generate content that will be shared, note that it was used. Keep a copy of prompts and outputs.

Why? It’s not about micromanagement — it’s about accountability. If something goes wrong, it helps to know how the decision or content was made.

5. Talk With Your Team — Not Just Your Tool

One of the quiet dangers of AI is that it can become your go-to sounding board— faster than you realize. But even the best tools can’t offer feedback, context, or alternative perspectives.

📌 Before finalizing something important, loop in a real human. That second set of eyes is still your best safety net.

🌱 Stay Curious, But Stay Vigilant

The point isn’t to scare you away from AI. It’s to help you use it with clarity and control.

Because here’s the truth: These tools are here to stay. They’re already reshaping how we draft, analyze, present, and decide. And they’ll only get smarter. The best part is they will level-up the way you work and your output to levels you have not reached before no matter your level of AI proficiency.

But smart tools require smarter users. Especially when: