Before deciding who uses AI, decide what can go into it

The question that stops everyone at the moment of truth is always the same: can I paste this? It has an answer, the answer fits in four lines, and writing those four lines takes an afternoon.

Other essays here have already said that a company must name what is confidential. This one is the how.

The order almost everybody gets backwards

The first conversation about AI in a company is usually about people: who can use it, who cannot, whether the intern can, whether sales can.

That is the wrong order, and the house material says why in one line: before deciding who uses AI, decide what can go into it.

It makes a practical difference. A rule about people requires judging each case and each job title. A rule about data applies to everybody, and whoever has the doubt in hand can apply it alone, without asking anyone.

Four levels, and only four

Public. What is already public: the catalogue, the website, marketing material. Goes into any approved tool, no conversation needed.

Internal. The non-sensitive day-to-day: drafts, general text, work questions. Goes into the approved tool.

Confidential. Commercial and operational secrets — revenue, margins, contracts, the project not yet announced. Only in the governed corporate tool; never in a personal or public account.

Restricted. Personal data of a client or an employee. Identity documents, health data, payroll. It does not go in. And if your business needs it to, that is a conversation with legal first — not a decision made by whoever has the file open at eleven at night.

Notice what the list does: it takes the decision out of the heat of the moment and hands it back to a yardstick written in an hour of calm.

The rule of thumb

No classification covers every case, which is why there is one sentence for the rest:

when in doubt between two levels, treat it as the higher one. The cost of erring upwards is small; downwards, it is a leak.

That is the asymmetry almost never said out loud. Erring upwards means somebody used a slightly more annoying tool than they needed. Erring downwards means data that does not come back.

With that sentence written down, nobody needs to get the classification right: they only need to know which way to be wrong.

And the ceiling applies to the board too

Here is the part that usually causes discomfort, and it has a technical reason, not a hierarchical one:

Until a governed corporate tool exists, the ceiling for everyone is Internal — including the board.

It is not excessive strictness. Without the technical limit, "confidential allowed" means confidential data going into an account the company does not control — and the job title of whoever pasted it changes nothing about where the data ended up.

You raise the ceiling after the barrier is in place, not before.

Whoever is not on the list does not use it — yet

The other principle closes the rest: a profile nobody thought about does not use AI with company data until it is added to the list.

It sounds harsh and it is the opposite: it is what allows fast approval for everyone already considered. It is safer to open up gradually, widening as you go, than to open everything and find the hole later — because you find the hole by the damage.

It is a living list, not a decree

And here is the detail that lets the thing survive its first month: every exception becomes a new line.

When somebody asks "can I use X for Y?", the answer is not just yes or no — it is a line added, so the same question is not asked again by somebody else three weeks later.

A yardstick that only forbids grows stale and becomes an internal joke. One that grows with each question becomes the way the house works.

The test

Pick the most delicate file your company produced this week, and answer:

Which of the four levels is it in — and would the person who produced it be able to answer that without asking you?

If the second half is "no", the yardstick does not exist yet. You exist.

This is not legal advice: what counts as personal data comes from the law of your country, and the Restricted level is a conversation with whoever answers for that in your company.