AI is becoming a secret weapon for workers
42% of office workers say they use generative AI tools (like ChatGPT) at work. — AFP Relaxnews
Artificial intelligence is gradually becoming part of everyday working life, promising productivity gains and a transformation of working methods. Between enthusiasm and caution, companies are trying to harness this revolutionary technology and integrate it into their processes.
But behind the official rhetoric, a very different reality is emerging. Many employees have chosen to take the initiative, adopting these tools discreetly, out of sight of their managers.
A recent survey,* conducted by software company Ivanti, reveals the extent of this under-the-radar adoption of AI. One-third of employees surveyed use AI tools without their managers' knowledge. There are several distinct reasons for this covert strategy.
For 36% of them, it is primarily a matter of gaining a "secret advantage' over their colleagues. Meanwhile, 30% of respondents fear that revealing their dependence on this technology could cost them their jobs. This fear is understandable, considering that 29% of employees are concerned that AI will diminish the value of their skills in the eyes of their employer.
The figures reveal an explosion in clandestine use. Forty-two percent of office workers say they use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT at work (+16 points in one year). Among IT professionals, this proportion reaches an impressive 74% (+8 points). Now, nearly half of office workers use AI tools not provided by their company.
Underestimating the risks
This covert use exposes organizations to considerable risks. Indeed, unauthorized platforms do not always comply with security standards or corporate data protection requirements. From confidential data to business strategies to intellectual property, anything and everything can potentially be fed into AI tools unchecked.
"It is crucial for employers to assume this is happening, regardless of any restrictions, and to assess the use of AI to ensure it complies with their security and governance standards,' emphasizes Brooke Johnson, Chief Legal Counsel at Ivanti.
The survey also reveals a troubling paradox. While 52% of office workers believe that working more efficiently simply means doing more work, many prefer to keep their productivity gains to themselves. This mistrust is accompanied by an AI-fueled impostor syndrome, with 27% of users saying they don't want their abilities to be questioned.
This situation highlights a huge gap between management and employees. Although 44% of professionals surveyed say their company has invested in AI, they simultaneously complain about a lack of training and skills to use these technologies effectively. This disconnect betrays a poorly orchestrated technological transformation.
In the face of this silent revolution, Brooke Johnson advocates a proactive approach: "To mitigate these risks, organizations should implement clear policies and guidelines for the use of AI tools, along with regular training sessions to educate employees on the potential security and ethical implications."
This survey suggests that companies should completely rethink their integration of AI, rather than turning a blind eye to this legion of secret users. The stakes go beyond mere operational optimization: the most successful organizations will need to balance technological use with the enhancement of human potential.
By encouraging open dialogue, employers can foster transparency and collaboration, ensuring that the benefits of AI are harnessed safely and effectively. Ignoring this silent revolution runs the risk of deepening mutual distrust between management and employees, to everyone's detriment. – AFP Relaxnews
*This survey was conducted by Ivanti in February 2025 among more than 6,000 office workers and 1,200 IT and cybersecurity professionals.
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Contradictheory: AI and the next generation
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The adult uses AI to communicate more clearly, but there the student is taking a shortcut. So, in an effort to deliver better work, the child might actually be learning less. And it's not going away. A 2024 study by Impact Research for the Walton Family Foundation found that 48% of students use ChatGPT at least weekly, representing a jump of 27 percentage points over 2023. And more students use AI chatbots to write essays and assignments (56%) than to study for tests and quizzes (52%). So what about the other students that don't use AI, like the girl I quoted above? I find they often take a rather antagonistic view. Some kids I talk to (usually the ones already doing well in class) seem to look down on classmates who use AI and, in the process, they look down on AI to do their homework as well. And I think that's wrong. As soon as I learned about ChatGPT, I felt that the key to using AI tools well is obvious. It lies in its name: tools. Like a ruler for drawing straight lines, or a dictionary for looking up words, AI chatbots are tools, only more incredibly versatile ones. One of the biggest problems, of course, is that AI chatbots don't always get their facts right (in AI parlance, they 'hallucinate'). So if you ask it for an essay on 'fastest marine mammal', there's a chance it'll include references to 'sailfish' and 'peregrine falcon'. In one test of AI chatbots, hallucination rates for newer AI systems were as high as 79%. Even OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, isn't immune. Their o3 release hallucinated 33% of the time in their PersonQA benchmark test, which measures how well it answers questions about public figures. The new o4-mini performed even worse, hallucinating 48% of the time. There are ways to work around this, but I think most people don't know them. For example, many chatbots now have a 'Deep Research' mode that actively searches the internet and presents answers along with sources. The thing about this is that you, the reasonable, competent, and capable human being, can check the original source to see if it's something you trust. Instead of the machine telling you what it 'knows', it tells you what it found, and it's up to you to verify it. Another method is to feed the chatbot the materials you want it to use, like a PDF of your textbook or a research paper. Google's NotebookLM is designed for this. It only works with the data you supply, drastically reducing hallucinations. You can then be more sure of the information it produces. In one stroke, you've turned the chatbot into a hyper-intelligent search engine that not only finds what you're looking for but also understands context, identifies patterns, and helps organise the information. That's just a small part of what AI can do. But even just helping students find and organise information better is a huge win. And ideally, teachers should lead the charge in classrooms, guiding students on how to work with AI responsibly and effectively. Instead, many feel compelled to ban it or to try to 'AI-proof' assignments, for example, by demanding handwritten submissions or choosing topics that chatbots are more likely to hallucinate on. But we can do better. We should allow AI in and teach students how to use it in a way that makes them better. For example, teachers could say that the 'slop' AI generates is the bare minimum. Hand it in as-is, and you'll scrape a C or D. But if you use it to refine your thoughts, to polish your voice, to spark better ideas, then that's where the value lies. And students can use it to help them revise by getting it to generate quizzes to test themselves with (they, of course, have to verify the answers the AI gives are correct). Nevertheless, what I've written about so far is about using AI as a tool. The future is about using it as a collaborator. Right now, according to the 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index, while 50% see it as a command-based tool, 48% of Malaysian workers treat AI as a thought partner. The former issues basic instructions, while the latter has conversations and you have human-machine collaboration. The report goes on to say explicitly that this kind of partnership is what all employees should strive for when working with AI. That means knowing how to iterate the output given, when to delegate, when to refine the results, and when to push back. In short: the same skills we want kids to learn anyway when working with classmates and teachers. And the truth is that while I've used AI to find data, summarise reports, and – yes – to proofread this article, I haven't yet actively collaborated with AI. However, the future seems to be heading in that direction. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about mathematician Terence Tao who predicts that it won't be long until computer proof assistants powered by AI may be cited as co-authors on mathematics papers. Clearly, I still have a lot to learn about using AI day-to-day. And it's hard. It involves trial and error and wasted effort while battling with looming deadlines. I may deliver inferior work in the meantime that collaborators may have to rewrite. But I remain, as ever, optimistic. Because technology – whether as a tool or a slightly eccentric collaborator – has ultimately the potential to make us and our work better. Logic is the antithesis of emotion but mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi's theory is that people need both to make sense of life's vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at lifestyle@ The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
