Solving the BYOAI Challenge: How to Consolidate and Manage AI Usage in Your Organization

If you lead a team, you probably have BYOAI occurring. And there’s a good chance you don’t know about it.

Microsoft and LinkedIn just released their 2024 Work Trend Index (AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (microsoft.com)) and 3 findings stood out:

• “75% of knowledge workers use AI at work today, and 46% of users started using it less than six months ago.”
• “78% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work (BYOAI)—it’s even more common at small and medium-sized companies (80%).
• “52% of people who use AI at work are reluctant to admit to using it for their most important tasks.”

What this report means for organizations

For every 10 knowledge workers on your team, it’s likely: 

• 8 workers are already using AI at work (and 4 of those started less than 6 months ago)
• 6 workers are bringing their own AI tools (BYOAI)
• 4 workers are reluctant to admit they are using AI for important tasks

Put another way: For every person in your team who is using AI openly, there’s likely another person who’s using AI quietly … and doing BYOAI. 

BYOAI raises a number of risks and challenges for organizations

1. Security risks: AI tools can expose sensitive or proprietary data.
2. Collaboration challenges: Different AI tools can hinder effective teamwork.
3. Increased costs: Individual licenses for various AI tools can add up quickly.
4. Lack of centralized control: BYOAI makes it harder to manage AI usage consistently.
5. Training challenges: Multiple different AI tools increases the cost and difficulty of training. 

What organizations can do to solve BYOAI

1. Consolidate usage to a single GenAI platform that provides users their choice of AI models and bots while centralizing purchasing, management, and administration.
2. Choose a consolidated platform that allows users to securely leverage existing organizational knowledge but does not use user data to train models. 
3. Choose a platform that provides discounts for volume purchases.
4. Choose a platform that provides ongoing and on demand training for AI.  
5. Choose a platform that is built around the collaborative use of Generative AI between teams of AI and teams of people.

There’s a single easy solution to do all of the above: BoodleBox.  

What happens when workers embrace GenAI?

According to the report: “AI makes their overwhelming workload more manageable (92%), boosts their creativity (92%), and helps them focus on the most important work (93%)—and it helps them feel more motivated (91%) and enjoy work more (91%).”

It’s not surprising then that “79% of leaders agree their company needs to adopt AI to stay competitive.”

To read the full report from Microsoft and LinkedIn: AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part (microsoft.com)