Thomas Byrnes on Addressing Shadow AI in Humanitarian Operations

Thomas Byrnes, CEO and Lead Consultant of MarketImpact, speaks with Brent Phillips, Humanitarian AI Today producer, about the growing challenge of "shadow AI" in the humanitarian sector. Byrnes defines shadow AI as the unauthorized use of AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini by organization staff and field teams. While these tools offer benefits and productivity gains, their unofficial use introduces serious risks, such as the accidental sharing of sensitive beneficiary data, linguistic errors, poor decision making in aid and protection contexts, and "hallucinations" that might lead to incorrect assessments during program design. To mitigate these risks, Byrnes introduced AidGPT, a training brand that provides humanitarian teams with the skills to use AI tools ethically and safely. A central component of this training is the AI workflow card, an open-source toolkit designed to force users to pause and define the AI's role, set guardrails against misinformation, and verify outputs against approved data checklists. Byrnes emphasizes that while AI tools can provide much-needed efficiency in an underfunded sector, they must be treated like "junior staff members" who require constant supervision and human accountability. Ultimately, he argues for breaking the stigma and "shame" surrounding AI use to facilitate an open, community-wide dialogue about risks, operational best practices and lessons learned.