Article
Irresponsible Sharing of Sensitive Data with AI
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly integrated into our daily lives, and its influence continues to grow. Chatbots and AI assistants help us complete tasks, automate processes, and improve efficiency. But it is astonishing how thoughtlessly corporate and personal data are shared with AI tools without considering the risks. Many fail to realise the extent of the exposure and potential consequences.
AI and Irresponsible Leaks of Corporate Data
I understand the temptation – uploading a spreadsheet into ChatGPT or Gemini and letting AI assist with analysis. The latest trend is the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, which is rapidly gaining popularity. However, many employees do not consider that they are copying entire customer databases, internal reports, business strategies, product sales data, and other sensitive marketing information into these tools—without any idea where this data ultimately goes!
Why Is This a Huge Problem?
- Loss of Control Over Data – Do we really think AI simply forgets what we provide? Data can become part of its knowledge base, and even though developers claim they do not store it, the truth is often more complicated.
- Geopolitical Risks – DeepSeek is a Chinese AI, and we all know how things work in China. Companies are under government scrutiny, and if you think your data cannot end up in the wrong hands, it’s time to wake up.
- Violation of GDPR and Other Regulations – Many do not realise that they might be violating GDPR, exposing their company to hefty fines. A single thoughtless action can create serious problems.
- Competitive Threat – If we believe our competitors are not seeking ways to access valuable data, we are mistaken.
Employees must recognise that every interaction with AI can have consequences. It is crucial that they:
- Think Before Sharing Data – Before uploading any data into an AI tool, they should evaluate whether it truly needs to be processed this way.
- Consult Company Policies – Companies should have clearly defined rules on what data employees can share with AI. If such policies do not exist, it is in employees' own interest to push for their creation. This can prevent situations where they inadvertently create a problem that jeopardises not only the company but also their own job security.
- Use Internal AI Solutions – Whenever possible, they should prioritise AI models managed and controlled by the company instead of public chatbots.
- Improve Their Digital Literacy – The more employees understand how AI works, the better they can protect sensitive data.
AI and Irresponsible Sharing of Personal Data
Sharing data with AI is not just about databases and business strategies. Every question we ask chatbots provides them with details about our thinking, interests, and values. In the future, these insights could be sold to companies for even more aggressive advertising targeting or to political parties for manipulation of public opinion.
Our interactions with chatbots also reveal our knowledge, problem-solving abilities, and thinking patterns. Essentially, this creates a database of the intelligence of the entire human population. Even my imagination is not enough to grasp how this might be exploited in the future, but the probability that someone will use this information against certain groups of people is very high.
This is a serious issue, and it is high time we start acting responsibly. Let’s not be lulled by convenience and assume that this does not concern us. If we do not wake up now, it may soon be too late.
Common questions on this article's topic
Why is sharing corporate data with AI tools risky?
What are the specific risks of using Chinese AI tools like DeepSeek?
Can sharing data with AI violate GDPR?
What do AI tools learn from our interactions?
How can employees protect sensitive data when using AI?
Why should individuals care about AI data privacy?
Related articles
The more I think about it, the more I realize what a fundamental issue this is.
You might say I am being too pessimistic, that I am fearmongering. Fear is useful.
No matter how I look at the future, I see very few answers and far too many questions and problems.
More articles
Europe does not have the capacity to face a full-scale, mass drone war of the kind we see in Ukraine. Three dependencies weaken it: China supplies the physical material for defence systems, the United States supplies capabilities Europe does not have, and twenty-seven states cannot agree how fast, or who pays. Rearmament plans exist, but they are being carried out slowly.
AI produces the graphic, the newsletter and the product page faster than a person. What is left for the one who used to do it is the judgement — knowing whether the output is good. But most people have worse judgement than AI. And whoever cannot judge quality cannot delegate either. How do you tell whether yours is the judgement a company relies on, or the kind it can replace?
In April, in the first part of this series, I wrote about an AI prediction system I had started building on my own machine. At the time the software was a few hours old and the prediction record was empty. The record since then has shown one thing — the system does not yet understand the market it is being asked to forecast. It can pull macro context, book value, earnings. But it cannot put those together into something that helps it understand the price.
Prague, 13 May 2026. On my way to work I started thinking about something that stayed with me for days. If most routine work on a computer disappears in the next ten years, and a large share of repetitive manual work disappears with it, what happens to the flow of money? Who pays whom for what? Which economic layers will exist, how large will they be, and what relationships will run between them? This is the six-layer map I sketched as an answer.
I am building an AI system to predict the S&P 500. It runs on my own machine, uses free public data — yfinance, FRED, the Shiller dataset — and grades every forecast against reality. This series documents the build itself: the decisions, the methodology, the mistakes. What I will eventually share from the running system is a separate question, and an honest one.
Yesterday I could not tear myself away from the computer. When I lifted my head, it was half past eight in the evening. I had been sitting alone upstairs for about three hours.
Will AI take my job? A certified Google trainer told me in June 2024 that my profession would cease to exist. Twenty-two months later, my job title has not changed — but ninety percent of what I do during the day is different. I have delegated more of my thinking to AI agents than I thought possible. I am not afraid. This is why, and what it means for anyone asking the same question.
One hour. Fifty-five minutes. That is how long it took to build what a Czech software firm had quoted at over €50,000. I built it with Claude Code. Not a prototype. Not a proof of concept. A working tool — the one the company actually needed. By the evening of the same day, it was running on staging. This is not about Claude Code. It is about what Claude Code exposes.
I have conducted roughly one hundred and fifty practical interviews over the past four years. Fifty for data specialist roles. A hundred for advertising and performance marketing specialists. Almost every one of them involved sitting down with a candidate over a practical task — something close to a real problem we actually need to solve at the company. Not theory. Not trivia. Applied problem-solving. Over time, I started noticing a pattern.
Before you can teach AI to understand anything, you need to see what it is hiding from you.
Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.
