The current focus of genAI use in the workplace places much of the onus on the worker to get it right, van der Meulen explains; and that means also having the critical thinking skills required to discern if results are appropriate, correct or ethical.
The inconsistent nature of individual use means productivity gains may not be worth the risk, he explains; while genAI tools can boost individual productivity, broad, generalist training means that workers invest effort in crafting precise prompts and context that may not even work.
Because of the “broad nature” of BYOAI tools, employees risk exposing their employers to data loss, intellectual property leakage, copyright infringement, and security breaches.
“They’re trained to be generalists, not specialists,” says van der Meulen. “Even though you have a good prompt and good context, still [there is] output that is off, that is not quite right. But often the onus is on the employee to make sure that this is usable.”
Some employers as well as governments attempt to solve these issues by banning BYOAI tools outright — for example, the Canadian government just announced a ban of DeepSeek on government devices, joining Taiwan, Italy, Thailand and the U.S. Employee use of ChatGPT has been banned by several large firms after data leaks, including Samsung, Amazon and several large banks.
