After 18 months of nonstop hype and rapid launches of new, easily accessible, consumer-facing tools, it might seem like everyone is experimenting with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). In fact, according to the new Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Report, nearly two-thirds (63%) of legal, tax, and risk and compliance professionals say they have personally tried using AI-powered technologies as a starting point for a task at work.

While this is an encouraging result for those of us driving innovation in the professional services space and continually looking for ways to achieve more and more time for employees with less, it also raises some important questions for business leaders. Specifically: are these people adopting GenAI within the bounds of prescribed company policies, and what about the remaining 37% of professionals who are hesitant to try AI? What’s stopping them?

Need for corporate guidelines on AI

The answers to both questions reveal some weaknesses in the way companies are offering AI-powered solutions to their employees. While some companies are incredibly prescriptive, specifying exactly how, when and where their employees should use AI and even providing them with tailored tools, others take a much more laissez-faire approach. When we asked people who have never used AI in their job why they are still hesitant, 37% said they are concerned about data security, 35% said they are unsure of what kind of work the technologies could be used for, and 28% said they are unsure how to access AI tools.

When we asked people who already use AI what they use it for, the most common answers were writing material-based articles, summarizing documents, and conducting basic research on technical topics, such as research for specific court cases and tax references.

Both ends of this spectrum offer some important lessons for business leaders. First, the majority of employees are already using GenAI to draft texts and conduct research in the workplace. If companies don’t have policies in place to best use this technology and the necessary safeguards to govern its use, they put themselves at risk that the technology could be misused. By now, we’ve all heard countless cautionary tales of professional users over-relying on consumer-facing AI tools to complete professional tasks like writing legal opinions or conducting a tax audit. The early adopters who are already using these technologies should be encouraged, but they also need to be guided to the right solutions and appropriate use cases.

But perhaps the more troubling finding from our data is that a large number of professionals in legal, tax, and risk and compliance—all areas where GenAI has dominated the news for over a year—still haven’t even looked into the technology, in many cases because they don’t know how to access it or what to use it for. This is a huge disconnect between leadership and employees. According to our survey, 94% of C-suite executives said they expect AI to significantly impact their strategies. This will be difficult to achieve if many of the employees who will be driving this transformation don’t even know where to find the technology.

An opportunity to define the responsible use of AI

While GenAI’s growth in business has been stratospheric compared to other technologies, we are still in the early adoption phase. Much of the development of new solutions is happening faster than companies can keep up with—let alone implementing policies to use them effectively. But this step will be critical to moving AI into the next phase of broader, everyday use in businesses.

Importantly, end users – the employees whose daily work routines will change in response to AI – will look to their employers and industry associations for guidance. A majority of 57% of professionals believe that certification processes for AI systems should be introduced, while 55% believe that professional/industry associations should develop and prescribe their own standards, and 45% believe that companies should develop and publish their own AI guidelines.

While there is currently great excitement in the market about the potential of AI to increase productivity and streamline operations, companies that want to fully benefit from this development must first focus on bringing their employees up to speed and guiding them through the adoption process.