Who checks the AI

Somebody in your business is probably using AI already. Often it is the free ChatGPT on someone’s phone, and nobody chose it. People use these tools because the shortcut helps. So the use is already there. What is usually missing is a written list: the jobs the business does, which ones AI may help with, and who checks each one. That list is all this sheet asks for.

1. Which jobs AI may touch

Write down the jobs first, all of them. Say Pete does the quotes and is the only one who understands the server. Both go on the list, alongside the bookings and the office WhatsApp. Then pick the ones that follow a pattern, such as a first draft of a quote, a summary of a long email thread, or tidying the notes on a booking. AI is good at work that needs precision rather than personality: the same steps, done carefully, every time.

Hand over one job that irritates people now. Then the next. If a job is hard to write down, AI will struggle with it too, and writing it down usually improves it anyway.

2. Who signs off each one

One person owns the whole list. One person, not a group, because a job owned by a group waits for someone else.

Each AI job then gets a named checker. The AI drafts the quotes and Pete checks them. Pete needs the authority to change what the AI produced, not just to read it. His question is simple: where did this answer come from? These tools can be confident and wrong, and they sometimes invent details. They also sound finished, which is exactly why a person looks.

3. Where your data goes

Anything typed into a public chat tool leaves the building, and you may not know where it is kept or for how long. One plain rule covers most of it: no customer details and nothing confidential goes into a public tool. Any tool that will handle personal information gets the list owner’s approval first.

Look at the software you already pay for, too. Booking systems and office packages add AI features without much announcement. Ask the supplier what happens to your data, and write the answer down.

The phone counts. If someone uses free ChatGPT for a job, put that job on the list. It tells you where help is wanted.

4. How you see what it did, and undo it

Every AI job leaves a record a person can read. The simplest arrangement is that the AI drafts and a person sends, so nothing reaches a customer until the checker has seen it. If a job cannot be seen and undone, it stays with a person for now.

Agree one place where anyone can say “the AI did something odd”. A line in the office WhatsApp will do.

5. What stays human

The accounts. Anything that rests on knowing a client, reading the room, or the feeling that something is off. AI brings speed and repetition; people bring context and care. Anything that affects people, money or compliance gets a person’s review before it goes out.

The UK’s data regulator, the ICO, points the same way. It says there is no “AI exemption” to data protection law, so customer details typed into an AI tool are covered by the usual rules. And where a machine makes a decision about a person, whoever reviews it must be able to change it.