Guidelines for Use

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Guidelines for Use: Thinking Inside the Box

This video describes the process used for the creation of this resource with the goal of supporting innovation while adhering to legislative, policy, and technology considerations for responsible use within educational contexts .

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Privacy in the Context of Teaching and Learning

Generative AI companies collect personal information from the time that a user visits the site to their completion of using their services. At minimum, account data includes enough information to associate the individual with their account to login (this is usually name and email address). Sometimes setting up accounts includes providing additional demographic data that is either optional or mandatory. For services that require payment, the payment information directly associates the individual based on how they pay with the account and associated content making it harder to anonymize or alias the individual. Additionally, generative AI companies will collect personal information from the use of their services (see below).

Type of Personal Data Collected by Generative AI tools

Log Data

Browser type, IP address, browser settings, date and time of using the service, how the user interacted with the functionality of the service.

Usage Data

The types of content requested, the types of content produced, features used, actions taken, time zone, country, dates and times of each request and response produced, user operating system version, user browser version, type of device used (computer, phone, tablet by brand and model), internet provider, IP address.

Device Data

As indicated above but without the details of how each feature was used with a device, but only the individual device information saved as a separate entry.

Session Data

Information about previous sites visited (ie. cookies), the individual sites visited on the generative AI company’s network, information about next sites visited, quality assurance data collected during site visits.

All personal information ends up being associated with each individual’s account, and generated third party personal information is also associated with each individual’s account and linked to the use of services by that individual. The result is that an individual’s use of generative AI services associates identifiable individuals with requests for products, and may associate identifiable third parties within that identifiable user’s resulting products.

Given the types of user information that are collected, and the third-party personal information that may be accurately input into generative AI, there are potential risks with using generative AI in learning environments. Foremost, the management of personal information needs to be minimal to what is necessary for the student to complete their studies in an academic program.

Important Note

  • The decision to use or permit use of generative AI tools in your course should be explicitly stated and the considerations of these technologies discussed openly with students 
  • The intention of discussing with students is to educate students on the risks and benefits of these tools  

Directions

Thinking inside the box is an approach to problem-solving where we use parameters within which we must function to determine the possible actions that must be taken. In the case of generative AI, the parameters are the areas of caution, relevant mitigation strategies, and the possible actions are the learning activities and assessment that can be achieved within those parameters. ​​​​​​​

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