Why employees smuggle AI into work

Peter (not his real name) is a product manager at a data storage company, which offers its people the Google Gemini AI chatbot. External AI tools are banned but Peter uses ChatGPT through search tool Kagi. He finds the biggest benefit of AI comes from challenging his thinking when he asks the chatbot to respond to his plans from different customer perspectives. "The AI is not so much giving you answers, as giving you a sparring partner," he says. "As a product manager, you have a lot of responsibility and don't have a lot of good outlets to discuss strategy openly. These tools allow that in an unfettered and unlimited capacity."