Copilot Responsibly My Friends
The writing is on the wall. We all know that AI is here to stay. No longer the wild fever dream of programmers, AI is now in your laptop daily, collaborating with you to make your workday easier.
From writing and design to decision-making and strategy, AI tools are embedded in how we work, create, and communicate. But as we embrace these technologies, a deeper question emerges: Can we use AI in strong, meaningful, and ethical ways—and still create from both the head and the heart?
Of course you can. But it requires your attention and intention.
Two sides of the coin: Power and Risk
AI offers incredible power. It can generate ideas, streamline workflows, and even mimic human creativity. But that power isn’t without risk. Without a human brain to give it context and understanding, AI can unintentionally put us at a disadvantage. AI might amplify bias, source without recognition or remove the emotion and ethics of our human experience.
Using AI ethically means knowing there are limits. We must ask some meaningful questions, like Who benefits from this output? Whose voice is missing? Is the content accurate, inclusive, and respectful?
Letting ethics be our guiding light
Ethical AI use isn’t just about avoiding discomfort, harm and error filled output —it’s about creating with integrity. That means:
Being Transparent: Just like when your team creates a winning presentation, we need to give credit where it’s due. Speak to the AI use in your content creation.
Taking Accountability: It’s still your creation. You are ultimately responsible for it, even if AI gave you a helping hand. Putting out work that is false, misleading or straight up wrong does still land on you.
Lean into Fairness: You wouldn’t reinforce stereotypes or deliberately exclude sections of our society, would you? Then let’s make sure that we don’t allow AI to do that on our behalf.
Keep it Private: Consider and respect data boundaries. Be sure to obtain consent for AI use in your work when it’s needed.
When we create without AI, we use integrity. Our humanity means that we take these things into consideration, and there’s no reason to stop now.
You can create with your head and your heart. And AI.
To create meaningfully with AI, we must engage both the head and the heart.
The head brings analytics, strategy, and logic. It helps us consider AI’s capabilities, limitations, and boundaries.
The heart brings empathy, intuition, and purpose. It is often the guiding light reminding us of the best reasons we’re using AI in the first place. It also keeps us thinking of who will consume our content, and what we hope to spark in them.
AI can’t think (head) without our input (heart). It requires context and nuance in order to produce what we can proudly share with the world. It cannot replace our personal stories, histories, humor and spark.
That’s an important distinction to remember.
So, go ahead friends. Copilot responsibly.
Being responsible with AI doesn’t mean rejecting it. Or worse, ignoring it. As I mentioned, it is here to stay.
Our challenge now is to use AI as a supporting player in the world of business – not the driver, sole creator or unchecked-truth-teller.
Doing things faster or more efficiently does us no favor if we are creating the wrong impact. Start with responsibility in mind and go forward from there.
So, keep creating, exploring all that AI can contribute. Ask smart questions, remember your integrity, and lean into your leadership skills. What got you here is now your foundation for responsible AI use. You’ve built trust in your clients, coworkers and followers, so let that be what drives you forward and helps you customize the way that AI fits into your world best.