AI That Minds Its Business

For AI to deliver real business value, it has to earn our trust.

It starts with the basics: knowing that your data is secure, private, and handled responsibly. Employees are more likely to use AI if they feel confident that AI won’t leak their information (or anyone else’s). And organizations are more likely to support AI if they can see that it is following the rules and not opening the door to compliance issues.

I’ve talked before about thinking of AI as a coworker, and that’s a useful lens for looking at safety and privacy too. In any company, a big part of IT’s job is making sure the right people have access to the right tools and data to do their job, but not more than that. When a new intern joins, we don’t hand them the CEO’s personal files or the company’s confidential financials. That would be irresponsible, even dangerous.

AI is no different.

To be effective, AI needs access to data. But, just like a human employee, it should only have access to the data it needs and nothing more. And since AI often works on behalf of someone—answering questions, summarizing information, or generating reports—it also has to operate in that person’s context. If an intern asks a question, the AI shouldn’t give them the CFO’s answer; it should only reply with data that the intern would already be authorized to see.

That’s not just common sense, it’s essential for compliance, especially when AI is running on a shared cloud infrastructure. Company data must be stored and handled in a way that meets regulatory standards and avoids unnecessary exposure. This is especially important as companies scale up their use of AI across departments, regions, and sensitive data domains.

It’s also why we’ve built our AI solutions with business in mind: not as a general-purpose tool that can bounce from writing poetry to generating cartoons, but as a focused, grounded, reliable partner. The AI should stay on topic, provide technically accurate answers, and not misuse company resources. That means sticking to company-specific data, not fabricating information, and responding appropriately for the role of the person making the request.

To make all of this work, we’ve partnered with Microsoft to use enterprise-grade content safety filters in Extreme Platform ONE. These filters help keep interactions clean, relevant, and aligned with company policy. But filtering is just one part of a bigger picture.

Safety and privacy aren’t features that can be bolted on at the end, they have to be designed in from the beginning. A trusted AI solution needs to consider how data is collected and cleaned, models are trained, user experiences are shaped, and data is stored and retained over time. Each layer of the stack matters, and every one needs its own set of guardrails.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to trust. And trust starts with the initial design, ensuring that AI handles data ethically and protects both the business and its users.  This is how Extreme Networks thinks about AI: not as a black box or a free agent, but as part of the team. It should follow the same rules as everyone else. No special treatment. No shortcuts. Just common sense, business-first design.

Wondering how we design AI you can trust? Get an inside look at our AI-powered enterprise connectivity platform Extreme Platform ONE in this six-part webinar series, and hear our developers and experts break down our business-first approach.