Common AI mistakes to avoid in your business

Working with AI? Here's how to avoid mistakes.

The use of AI in businesses is skyrocketing. Statistics Canada reports that just 6.1% of businesses used AI in the second quarter of 2024, but that number had doubled to 12.2% by the second quarter of 2025.  

There are countless AI tools that businesses can use, and countless ways to use them. And while AI has no doubt helped many business owners to save time and streamline their workflows, there are also plenty of mistakes to be wary of.  

For example, Air Canada was recently found liable in court for false information provided by a chatbot. There is no shortage of mistakes and mishaps from major brands around the world, and all of them can serve as a reminder for business owners to be cautious with their AI use.  

Here are 5 common AI mistakes to avoid as a business owner.  

1. Whole-heartedly Trusting AI  

AI making up facts and sharing false information is so common that there’s a word for it – hallucinating.  

An OpenAI study found that the most sophisticated tools hallucinated as much as 33% and 48% of the time.  

That’s why it is so important to double check everything that AI does, even if it’s nothing more than putting together a brochure for your business. Everything from the facts to the phone numbers need to be double checked before sharing it publicly.  

Of course, there’s an acronym for that now. It’s called ‘HITL’, or ‘Human in the Loop’. It basically means you’ve used AI, but a human has checked it over and made any changes for accuracy.  

2. Sharing sensitive data with AI  

It’s quickly become common to plug in data for AI to turn into neat presentations or spreadsheets.  

But one recent study found that more than 4% of prompts and over 20% of uploaded files contained sensitive content, which suggests that sensitive business data is being leaked to AI models at a grand scale.  

These mistakes are seeing everything from credit card information to employee details to legal files leaking on the internet.  

So if you’ve ever used Grammarly to spell check a legal document, Canva to put internal data into a beautiful presentation, or Chat GPT to summarize client emails, keep in mind that you could be leaking sensitive information online.  

3. Not undertaking regular training  

One of the best ways to avoid mistakes in general is to stay up to date with what’s out there, how to use it, and how to avoid pitfalls. And with the proliferation of AI has come a boom in AI training options.  

Sidecar offers some excellent options, and we have our own regular workshops and webinars available for free through Community Futures BC. The tools themselves often also come with training modules to learn how to best use them.  

Keep an eye out for the options out there, ask around your network, and sign up to anything that catches your eye. As AI evolves so quickly, it’s important that we all invest in consistent training to make the most of it – and avoid costly mistakes.  

4. Over-reliance on AI  

It’s early days yet, but some studies are already showing that reliance on AI tools may be reducing our ability to think logically and creatively on our own.  

One study from MIT showed that ChatGPT users “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.”  

While AI should be used as a tool to make your life easier, users may need to be cautious not to rely on it too heavily, or risk decreasing their own abilities to come up with creative solutions.  

5. Treating chatbots like search engines  

Did you know that chatbots have a knowledge cutoff? For example, ChatGPT-5 (the latest update of the large language model), has knowledge up to October 1, 2024. Essentially, it was trained with information that was accurate up to that point in time.  

That means that if you ask it about any events after that date, it may not be able to help, or worse, it might bluff and make something up. Some AI does have the ability to search the internet, it might only do so at your request – so again it might make something up instead of completing a current search.

If you’re looking for information or anything relating to recent events, you are still best to use an ‘old-fashioned’ search engine instead.   

Need more business advice?  

Community Futures Howe Sound offers free business advice for any business owners – or would-be business owners – in the Sea to Sky.  

Book a one-on-one meeting here to get started.