24th February 2025 Posted by - Alexander Accountancy
AI The good and the bad
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to make headlines as businesses work out how to make effective use of it.
The government is continuing to push for growth in the AI industry. Last week, it opened bidding so that local authorities can submit proposals to become the next AI Growth Zone. It expects thousands of jobs to be created as a result and that it could rejuvenate local communities in various parts of the UK.
Last week saw the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit take place in Paris. Representatives from 80 countries that include world leaders, tech bosses and academics discussed the current progress of AI and future goals.
The emergence of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI service, has caused a lot of discussion in the AI world. Partly due to fears over security concern – Australia has banned it on government devices as a result. And partly because it appears to be have been developed on a much lower budget than has been the case with other AI services.
On the other hand, the BBC published a report on their own research saying that AI chatbots are unable to accurately summarise news. In their study of ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity, they found that 51% of all AI answers to their questions about the news were deemed to have significant issues of some sort. 19% of AI answers that cited BBC content contained factual errors such as incorrect statements, numbers and dates.
The BBC also found that the chatbots “struggled to differentiate between opinion and fact, editorialised, and often failed to include essential context.” Their report raises concerns about whether an AI generated headline or news summary might lead to harm.
The international law firm, Hill Dickinson, has decided to reign in the use of AI by its staff and has blocked general access. It found that there has been a significant increase in AI usage by its staff and that much of the usage was not in line with its AI policy. Access is now dealt with under a request process.
Commenting on this, the Information Commissioner’s Office felt that there is a danger in firms outlawing the use of AI but staff continuing to use it under the radar.
As the use of AI continues, it seems likely that we will continue to see a mixture of stories as businesses across the world work out how to safely and effectively use AI.
In the meantime, it seems clear that AI tools should not be used on a ‘set and forget’ basis. Use of AI and the reasons for it given by staff need to be understood. And the output of AI needs to be challenged, such as by being carefully reviewed by someone who understands the subject under review.
