Sydney's Workaround for Using AI in Regulated Industries

The Problem With AI in Regulated Work

Sydney's consulting clients are often federally or state regulated, which means proprietary information can't simply be typed into a chatbot. "Because of the type of clients that I work with, usually federally and state regulated, we have to be very careful about how AI is used because of the proprietary information that could be input in there," she told us.

Her solution is a loophole worth stealing if you work under similar constraints. "I paraphrase in my own personal uses of like Copilot or ChatGPT and then use that to then influence the work that I'm doing. So that way, I'm playing it safe on both sides, but still being able to be efficient."

In other words: strip the identifying and proprietary detail out, ask the general version of the question, and apply the answer back to the specific situation herself. She gets the speed of AI without ever exposing what she's not allowed to expose.

Her Advice for Anyone Entering the Field

Asked what she'd tell someone getting into consulting, Sydney's answer was less about tools and more about mindset. "Take a chance on yourself," she said. "AI allows you to experiment. You can use it to ask a bunch of different questions. And then after you've had some experience or gained more perspective, you can come back and review and reflect on what you've asked it before and then ask some of those same questions again. And by that time, you would have had more perspective. So you can re-engineer those questions a little bit better or ask them in a different way."

That's a genuinely useful framing: your first questions to an AI tool don't have to be your best ones. Experience changes what you know to ask for.

Her Hot Take

"My hot take on AI is that it's not as scary as it seems," Sydney told us, "because I think that people tend to be scared of things that they're unsure, unaware of. So just try it because you can't talk about it, not be about it. So keep trying, keep experimenting."

Why This Matters for Regulated Industries

Sydney's approach is a useful case study for anyone in law, healthcare, finance, or consulting who has written off AI entirely because of compliance concerns. The tools don't have to touch sensitive data to still save real time. The discipline is in knowing exactly where the line is and staying on the right side of it.

Where to Find Sydney

You can follow Sydney's work at @magnifisyd on Instagram.

If you work in a regulated field and have figured out your own workaround for using AI responsibly, we want to hear about it. Comment SKOOL on our Instagram and we'll send you the link to join Build With Her.