Your AI Holiday Survival Guide
AI can save your holiday season or completely destroy it, depending how you use it…
As busy professionals juggling year-end deadlines and holiday parties, how can we survive the season without losing our minds? Enter the AI assistant: Your new digital elf with a potentially problematic relationship with confidentiality.
AI assistants promise salvation during the holiday season: draft contracts while buying gifts, summarize documents during cookie exchanges, organize your calendar between client emergencies and ugly sweater parties.
But those "free" AI tools are like your chatty Aunt Mildred at Thanksgiving. If you don’t engage them wisely, everyone will know your secrets way before Christmas rolls around. You're not getting free help; you're trading your confidential information for convenience. You're risking privacy law violations, breaches of confidentiality, and a stocking full of penalties.
Plus, AI "hallucinates" more than your uncle after too much eggnog. It can make up convincing facts that are completely wrong, not to mention algorithmic bias and errors produced from bad training data. And "ChatGPT made me do it" is not a legal defense.
Your Survival Guide (AKA: How Not to Ruin the Holidays)
How can we use AI safely?
The Golden Rule: Treat free AI like your gossipy relative: Never tell it anything confidential. No client names, medical records, or trade secrets. When in doubt, don't type it out.
Upgrade Your Tools: Invest in enterprise-grade AI with better security. Check your employer's AI policies (they exist for a reason). Organizations need written guidelines and training.
Vendor Vetting Essentials:
You own your inputs and outputs (not the AI company)
Business Associate Agreements for any patient data
Encryption everywhere (in transit and at rest)
Audit trails that actually work
Create Your AI Rulebook: Match tools to tasks by sensitivity level. Internal brainstorming? Maybe okay. Client-facing work? Proceed with extreme caution. And make sure you fact-check everything.
Quality Control Is Not Optional: Review AI outputs like you would any work product. Hope is not a compliance strategy.
The Holiday Gift That Keeps on Giving: Peace of Mind
Efficiency and ethics aren't mutually exclusive. With proper safeguards, AI can help without compromising your professional obligations.
Choose your tools wisely, use them thoughtfully, and you can use AI with your sanity and professional reputation intact. Your clients will thank you. Your insurance carrier will thank you. Future you will definitely thank you.
And while I love AI, my little pups are still my favorite assistants.
Question for you: Are you using AI more or less in your workflow as we approach year-end?
(Full disclosure: AI helped draft this article—but only after following every guideline above. Practice what you preach, people.)