I'm told that a number of folk in the IT world are, for various reasons, considering AI tools "The Answer" for any number of problems. Free tools don't have a purchase cost. AI can make the same number of people more effective. Perhaps there are security problems but that's always been the case in every technology - the regulatory, insurance and terms of service situations are not substantially different from even years ago for all that. So we should forge ahead on broad use of AI and not worry too much. We'll realize the gains of lower wage costs now and for the future problems, there may be no way to predict what actions will be needed and so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
That's hardly a perfect plan but it's an arguable default preference. I have to think it's popular and becoming more so. But what if something, heaven forbid, should go wrong? There needs to be an out-of-band events history maintained somewhere.
If the above describes our future (or current) work environments, I have a suggestion that I've seen engineers and police officers use on the job. It's a handwritten work diary or record of daily events. Engineers have, in my experience, used large blank book diaries at their desks to write notes about anything of consequence that's occurred in their areas, with time and date. Police officers use pocket-sized note pads to do the same. These items are not part of the normal work flow. They become evidentiary, though, in case of trouble.
A decision maker above you may not send out emails or otherwise document chancy decisions or plans. The decision maker (or team member of some other nature) may pivot to undocumented orders or strategies. Having offline written records may not help you convince anyone of anything. But normal workflow is often insufficient where automation may cause data loss or overwrites. And there's the common situation of NO automation or audit trail having been functional in the first place.
And this is not just a dodge to prevent AI from snakebiting you. It works as protection from disasters of all sorts, from office politics, from unexpected regulatory changes, from organizational shakeups and so forth. And if it's not stored on the phone but on ordinary paper, it requires no batteries and can possibly survive drops into public toilets.
