implementation benefits your company while remaining within important safeguards.

The Benefits of AI for Information Management 

Of course, before we jump into the ethical guidelines for AI in information management, it’s worth mentioning the many benefits that AI can afford your business—if implemented well. AI-powered search engines can use natural language processing to help your employees find documents faster. It can summarize long documents, saving users hours of time skimming through huge PDFs. It can automatically assign metadata, organizing documents in a logical manner. AI can sort through huge quantities of data, providing predictive analytics and unprecedented visibility into your company’s operations.

AI really is the “next big thing” in information management. It can automate processes across your entire company and save hours of employee time. The potential ROI is huge. But it isn’t enough to implement AI haphazardly and hope for the best. Implementing AI well takes strategy, ethical guidelines, and caution.

4 Ethical Considerations in AI 

While AI is powerful, it also has inherent risks that every business leader should be aware of. Let’s take a look at the 4 main ethical considerations of AI in information management.

• Error/Hallucination: You’ve probably heard of this peril of AI. Generative AI systems—across many different functions and companies—have the capacity to get things wrong. They can even “hallucinate,” or provide information that isn’t even close to the right answer. This can be especially problematic when the user has no way of checking the AI’s work. The more sensitive the information, the more problems arise should the AI hallucinate. For example, if you asked an AI system for a particular budget or contract amount, and the AI tells you the wrong number, that bad information could produce lots of negative consequences.
• Data Security & Compliance: For companies who need information management systems, data security and compliance are key. Without strict security measures or compliance policies, sensitive customer data may be leaked. AI can exacerbate this problem: most AI systems that are publicly available take and store the data that you enter into them—whether for training or other purposes. GenAI systems use whatever data they can to create their answers, which means that if you or your employees put sensitive data into it, it could reveal that data to others. Even internal AI systems can put your company at risk of noncompliance if they reveal sensitive information to employees who should not have access to it.
• Bias: New research has shown that AI can replicate the bias found on the internet, whether that’s racial bias, gender bias, or something else. AI doesn’t know right from wrong, and it scans all corners of the internet for training. Beyond personal bias, AI can also perpetuate bias in a different way: because AI systems only know what they’re trained on, if they’re not trained on a large enough or diverse enough sample size—no matter the data—they may amplify existing biases or data problems.
• Replacing Humans: This issue is more of an external than an internal problem. Many knowledge workers are worried about AI potentially replacing them or making their job superfluous. It’s important to recognize these worries and work to mitigate them, or many employees may resist using AI in their work or resent the company for implementing an AI system in any form.

Clearly, any business leader who wants to implement AI has their work cut out for them. But there’s hope! While there aren’t any perfect solutions to these AI risks, there are steps you can take to mitigate these risks.

What Now? Action Steps to Promote Ethical AI Use 

Now that we’ve seen the dangers of AI in information management, let’s cover some ways in which you can address these dangers. These concerns can be addressed through both how you set up your AI implementation as well as how you and your employees use your AI tools.

• Error/Hallucination: One of the most important features of an information management AI system is citation. In other words, the AI should give all users links to the places it draws information from, including documents and help webpages, for example. This allows users to double-check the AI’s answers. The AI should also have a feedback tool that lets users give feedback on whether an answer was correct or not. Employees should be trained to check the AI’s work, especially when dealing with important and/or sensitive customer information.
• Data Security & Compliance: Ensuring data security with AI tools is a big job, but some best practices include enabling strong encryption, separating personally identifiable information from other information, and implementing user-based permissions that hold across AI chatbots and search functions. Some AI models come specially equipped to deal with sensitive data, so that may be a way forward for companies in specialized industries.
• Bias: One of the best ways to counter bias in AI is by training your information management system’s AI tools on as diverse and accurate a dataset as possible. With AI, the responses you get are only as good as the data you give it. Third-party audits may be helpful to find any “blind spots” that are hard to discover from inside the company. Keeping up with any software updates that are released will also help, as the software provider is likely to create solutions to any widespread problems in the system.
• Replacing Humans: In order to calm fears of AI replacing knowledge workers, it’s important to bring in your employees early on in the AI implementation process. Ask for their feedback, concerns, and questions. Show them how AI can help them by accomplishing tedious manual tasks, thus freeing up their time for more creative pursuits that need a “human touch.”

 The overall guiding principle should be a strategy of moderation: yes, AI can transform your business’s operations, but change should come at a measured pace. AI isn’t an unqualified good, and it needs to be implemented with care. Proceed with caution, strategy, and transparency as you work to bring your company into the “new world” of AI. 

Give Yourself a Head Start with M-Files Aino 

If you’re looking for an AI solution in the field of information management, M-Files Aino might be right for you. Aino gives you a head start on the principles we’ve outlined above: it automates permissions so no one has access to the wrong information; it cites its sources so that employees can double-check its work; and it can automatically apply compliance or security protocols that you set up.

If you’re curious about how Aino could work for your business—or if you’re looking for a partner to strategize and assist with your M-Files implementation—contact us today. Our experts would love to speak with you about how we can help transform your company through the power of AI and information management software.