Could you reconstruct the decision a year later?
One habit I have developed working around operational systems is to think backward from the future investigation. I do not assume that every process will fail, but asking what evidence would be needed six months or a year later forces a clearer conversation about accountability. If someone challenged a decision after the fact, could the organization establish what information was available, what role AI played, what the human accepted or rejected, and who ultimately owned the decision?
The legal treatment of AI conversations is still developing, and not every prompt will automatically become discoverable evidence. Privilege, work-product protection, relevance, possession, proportionality and the circumstances of a particular case can all affect whether material must be produced. A New York court, for example, recently rejected an effort to obtain a litigant’s ChatGPT records, finding the material at issue was protected legal research. That uncertainty should not encourage organizations to ignore the issue. It should encourage them to make deliberate governance decisions before an auditor, regulator, investigator or opposing counsel forces the question.
The Watson Grinding litigation did not convince me that every AI prompt is a record. It convinced me that organizations need to know when an AI interaction becomes consequential enough to treat like one.
