Clean up your shared drive before you connect an AI assistant to it
AI tools treat every file they can reach as fair game, including the old price lists and ex-employee folders you forgot about.
What happened
Forbes published a piece by Nick Burling, Chief Product Officer at Nasuni, with a simple warning: AI is very good at finding data, and that becomes a problem when a business has forgotten the data exists. He lists old project folders, former employees' files, duplicate datasets and archived contracts as typical examples.
According to Forbes, Burling describes a manufacturer whose AI assistant might pull a 2018 hazardous materials policy from a retired SharePoint site instead of the current one. An employee follows the outdated guidance, and the company falls out of compliance. The AI found real data, he writes, but that data should no longer have been in play.
Burling also writes in Forbes that an AI agent (software that can take steps on its own, like gathering files and drafting a reply) preparing a customer renewal could pick up an obsolete pricing document simply because the file is still reachable.
Why it matters
Burling writes in Forbes that someone opening an old document might notice the date or author and realize it has been replaced. When AI folds a piece of that document into an answer, those clues mostly fade. A document does not become more trustworthy just because AI can find it, he says.
A second Forbes column, by Heather Bassett, MD, of Xsolis, adds that agentic systems can now assemble information, draft correspondence and trigger next steps. She argues leaders need to know what tools an agent can access and what data it can change. She also says every agent needs a named owner who can pause it.
Put together: the more an AI can do on its own, the more it matters what it can see.
What it means for your business
- Law and accounting firms: Old engagement letters, superseded fee schedules and closed-client files may sit in the same folders the AI searches. Decide what should be off limits before connecting it.
- Clinics: Burling's healthcare example in Forbes is that some records must be kept for years to meet regulatory requirements, even as the access rules around them grow outdated. Keeping a record is not the same as letting an assistant use it, so check what is reachable and by whom.
- Trades and construction: Last year's bids and retired price sheets can leak into a new quote. Burling also notes in Forbes that old field reports and change orders can hold hard-won lessons, so archive them deliberately rather than deleting them blindly.
- Agencies: Former staff folders and old client templates can end up in new proposals. Name one person who owns the AI's access and can switch it off.
One thing to try this week
Pick the one folder, drive or inbox you would connect to an AI first. Spend an hour searching it for words like "price list," "rates," "policy" and "template." Move anything outdated into an archive folder the AI will not be connected to.
Then look at the folders of anyone who has left, and check who the drive is shared with. Only after that, switch the assistant on, and write down who is in charge of it.