Do you have thoughts or advice on (diplomatically/covertly) evading corporate pushes to adopt AI? I failed to talk my way out of it with manager but wondered if I could have done something different.
The general context is I work in (non-compsci) engineering at a company that uses Microsoft products and is pro-AI. I demurred my manager's request that I get Copilot premium up until he asked my feelings on AI tools. I replied "tends to be negative" since I had bad experiences with it as a customer of companies that use it, among other concerns that it would jeapordize the quality of my work (admittedly I'm under-educated in security/privacy issues and only spoke to my personal experiences). He still said he wants his team to get comfortable using it to stay competitive in the industry and that I should find at least one way to use AI to work more efficiently (ugh).
(**Amendment to the anon ask about evading AI at work diplomatically: doing so while hating AI with a passion for non-work-performance-metrics reasons, as those emotions are rarely helpful as an underling trying to persuade your boss that you have sensible reasons for not wanting to use the AI agent he is very optimistic about)
i'm glad you're asking them, and first of all, thank you for pushing back while being thoughtful about it. you're not alone; as you might have guessed -- personally in a similar boat since so many corporations in general has jumped on the bandwagon.
the good news is that it is a temporary bandwagon; bubble, trend, fad, whatever one wants to label it. even google's CEO (who has every reason to keep the hype going) is more chilly on it this year, and more experts & realistic voices are loudly signaling that it's going to be a particularly nasty bubble.
the bad news is there is an inherent power structure to who's pushing it.
(C-suite & upper management especially), so when you say evading; depending on your financial situation (and if you have any dependents), there may be some worth in playing along with the absolute bare minimum. (and, frankly, lying / obfuscating usage, plain and simple. there is no irredeemable dishonor in lying for genuine survival. so much of corporate is knowing how to bullshit with a perfect poker face.)
( > this is a sidebar that's really specific to how certian corporations operate and promote/fire people, your mileage may vary - but if you can keep any mention of AI requirements out of your performance reviews/ yearly "goals/metrics" through whatever bullshitting you need to do, that's helpful to core long term stability. so far i've managed to keep it out of mine so they can attempt to lean hard with ~suggesting~ improvements, but for at least one year, quietly not using AI won't affect performance reviews as long as i simply Am Better than most everyone with raw performance. if they start acting like it's mandatory, ask for it in writing (unsaid to them: for a legal paper trail because that's a whole different legal beast). make them work for it; these are fundamentally lazy managers who want to cut corners, not hold onto ethics. also? save every policy change email on this topic to a personal email account for more paper trail there too. )
in terms of pushing back in other ways, there's a few potential strategies:
if you're in the marketing side of things, and selling to Gen Z or particularly anti-ai demographics, you may want to cite a few reputable articles about how backlash against companies too aggressive with AI has hurt their profits. your boss' comments about "staying competitive" feels like it might be sensitive to this especially. additionally, there's international legislation in the works as far as AI transparency in marketing goes (mexico, new york & california) - so not just consumer risk, but legal/process risk too. having to replace AI content assets is gonna be expensive for a lot of orgs ~
is your workplace "product" heavily reliant on safety and trust? (medicine, food, baby products, safety gear - think products that involve lawsuits should something fail, or somebody die). if so, this might be an angle to quietly pursue; talk around your legal or product integrity department if there's one, and see if there's hesitation and hard evidence/profit risks that they're concerned about; try to get at least three citable bits of evidence if your manager presses again. lawsuits and recalls are not cheap (hint: in the millions of dollars minimum!)
security wise, AI can be shockingly risky. there's at least several high-profile people that have deleted important digital work equipment via their workplace AI (source: Claude deleting an entire companie's production database. / A meta security researcher deleting their entire inbox via openclaw. ) AI is also notoriously inaccurate with its summaries, so i can also see it giving incorrect numbers in analysis and audits being a type of security risk.
some people, you're not ever going to convince (sounds like your manager might be one of them) - a dear friend of mine had the excellent metaphor that they're gambling everything on this with the hopes that they'll make bank (not knowing they're the sucker for getting in so late) - and so they're extra hard to talk back from the ledge.
but you would be surprised at how far simple pushback can go.
wishing you well with it.
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