This article outlines guidelines to support the responsible and ethical use of AI technology, while managing risk to the College's institutional data and systems.
See also:
Appropriate use
Attention: The College reserves the right to disconnect or disable, without warning or prior notice, any computer, account, or service that poses a security or performance threat to College resources or services, or that otherwise violates College policies.
- Use College-provided AI tools
Note: Their terms of use and security features are designed to protect the privacy and security of your files, data, and generated content. Data you upload to, or generate with, them will not be used to train AI models or answer AI queries made by others.
Other tools may lack these protections. Always review a tool's terms of service and privacy policies carefully, and avoid uploading any private or sensitive information. See Navigating the terms and conditions of generative AI.
- Follow all relevant College policies:
- Acceptable Use Policy
- Data Handling Policy
- Students are bound to the Honor Code for academic work
Hallucinations and bias
Always critically evaluate any generative AI output. These tools make statistical predictions about the combination of words, sounds, or pixels that best fit a given prompt - based on the data they have been trained on.
They are vulnerable to biases with that training data and can predict things that are statistically plausible but have no factual basis. For instance, they may generate realistic citations for books and authors that do not exist!
Copyright
The applicability of copyright law, moral rights, and fair use to these tools is still under discussion. Some generative AI products, such as Adobe Firefly, prohibit users from uploading copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright holder.
Want to learn more? See our Generative AI in Higher Education research guide for more information.
Environmental impact
AI processing is energy-intensive and, although researchers are working to increase efficiency and reduce environmental impact, there are concerns that AI growth will offset those gains.
Want to learn more? See “Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact” in MIT News and our Generative AI in Higher Education research guide.
Vested interests
Many stories about AI impact are generated or sponsored by companies who stand to gain from AI’s expansion. For example, The Chronicle of Higher Education's research brief on How Generative AI is Changing the Classroom was funded by Amazon AWS, a major cloud-computing provider.
Want to learn more? See “Watching the Generative AI Bubble Deflate” from Harvard’s Ash Center.
College-provided AI tools
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Adobe Firefly |
Microsoft Copilot |
Zoom AI Companion |
- Adobe Firefly: A suite of generative AI tools designed to produce image and video elements.
- Microsoft Copilot: A general-purpose generative AI tool with a chat interface, built on OpenAI's ChatGPT.
- Zoom AI Companion: An "AI assistant" that summarizes Zoom meetings and answers questions about them.
Want to learn more?
- Bryn Mawr College's Generative AI in Higher Education research guide
- LinkedIn Learning
Questions?
Looking to discuss copyright or acceptable use concerns about generative AI? Contact a librarian or email library@brynmawr.edu! For all other questions or issues, don't hesitate to reach out to the Help Desk.
Phone: 610-526-7440 | Library and Help Desk hours
Email: help@brynmawr.edu | Service catalog
Location: Canaday Library 1st floor
