The Do's and Don'ts of AI
Kalamazoo, MI | July 13, 2026
This article at a glance:
- AI has strengths and weaknesses that you should be aware of.
- We're still in the early days of AI, so some caution is recommended.
- With the right approach, you can benefit from AI while still being responsible.
The golden rule of the internet: “Once you put something online, it’s out there forever.”
You might remember a time when not everyone knew that, once you posted something online, there’s no taking it down. Someone, somewhere, stores that information as soon as you upload it, and you can’t make them delete it.
It seems so easy to understand now; but back then, most people just didn’t know.
These days, the “new thing” isn’t the internet: it’s AI. So, what mistakes are we making with AI right now that we might regret later?
Let’s take a look at the Do’s and Don’ts that everyone needs to know when using AI.
Do: Use AI to Learn and Grow
One of the most powerful ways to view AI is as your personal learning assistant.
Just think: How many times have you struggled to learn something just because it wasn’t communicated in a clear, understandable way? Or, how many times would you have been able to learn something if you had a personal tutor on-demand to help you out?
AI like Claude and ChatGPT can serve as that personal tutor to you (to an extent). With an encyclopedic knowledge of nearly any concept on the internet, you can finally seek answers that make sense to you, personally.
Don’t: Turn Your Brain Off
It’ll only get easier to stop thinking critically as AI does some heavy lifting for you. But it’s up to you to keep a critical eye on quality.
As you use AI tools (and as AI gets smarter), you might start to feel tempted to trust its outputs without looking too closely. But unfortunately, that could lead to unforeseen consequences.
AI like ChatGPT and Claude can often provide answers that sound confident, but may not be accurate at all. In fact, I (and many others) have seen ChatGPT take a strong stance on something, only to completely revise its opinion as it continues to generate the very same response.
Always remember to check the sources an AI cites—otherwise, it could be misinterpreting information and conveying it to you with confidence.
Do: Rely on Humans for Big Decisions
One of the perks of AI is that it can help you offload a lot of the mental energy that comes with making small decisions. But at the same time, it’s important to base major decisions on the insights you get from trusted friends and professionals. While AI is great at exploring most topics at a surface level, it can’t reliably:
Give sound leadership or legal advice
Tell you who to hire or how an interview went
Resolve sensitive customer issues
Understand your greater workplace dynamic
Don’t: Put Sensitive Information into Public AI Systems
Even when you delete conversations with an AI or create a temporary chat, don’t assume that your information is actually being deleted.
From May to October of last year, for instance, OpenAI was forced to retain all user logs because of a lawsuit. And those chat logs are still available to be used in the massive, very publicized lawsuit against OpenAI.
Speaking of lawsuits and legal shenanigans, it’s also probably not safe to trust AI companies when they say they truly delete all of your data. Even if each AI company did have good intentions all the time, we already know that companies can’t protect against every threat.
Just think of all the ways that your digital data has already been breached:
Companies don’t have their cybersecurity up to code (Equifax Breach, 2017)
Hacking groups breach a company’s cybersecurity (Stryker, 2026)
One disgruntled employee steals the data (Capital One, 2019)
Do: Start With a Problem, Not a Tool
AI is such an exciting piece of technology that it’s easy to put the cart before the horse. By that, I mean that it’s easy to try to find new ways to use AI, instead of asking the question: “Can I solve this problem easier with AI?”
It’s easy to try out ChatGPT or Claude for the first time and think of how helpful it could be for updating your website, or for creating new marketing materials. But first, ask yourself: How much of a priority is it to update your website right now? And, were you already going to create new marketing materials before having the idea to do them with ChatGPT’s help?
It’s easy to start by picking up ChatGPT and thinking “How can I use AI?” But many of us have been down that path, and you may end up spending a lot of time finding solutions to low-priority problems. Instead, revisit your top 5-10 workflow problems ask: “Can any of these problems be solved by AI?”
Don’t: Assume AI is Accurate
Since AIs like ChatGPT and Claude are so well-spoken, it’s easy to think they’re correct about something when they might just be confidently incorrect.
But AI doesn’t have a sense of judgement for when it should be feeling confident or cautious, because AI is just an algorithm—it doesn’t have intuition.
On top of that, AI models like ChatGPT are so deeply programmed to help solve your problems that they may even resort to creating completely false information—known as hallucinations.
These hallucinations can be so convincing, that back in 2023, a law firm was even fined $5,000 for having cited “fictitious legal research” created by ChatGPT.
Do: Consult IT Professionals
However you use AI at your workplace, the absolute best thing to do is to consult with your IT department. Or, if you don’t have one, to consider reaching out to a managed service provider like us at Omega.
AI is a powerful tool, but it’s not one to be treated lightly. For more information on what AI use could look like for your business, click here to contact us today!
