AI Guidelines for Faculty and Staff

Scope

These guidelines are written with the use of software and data by faculty for staff as they encounter opportunities to include AI tools in their work. Below are suggestions for best practices when using AI and for AI tool procurement considerations & processes.

If you’re looking for more info on AI in the classroom, the Library has created AI Literacy and Critical Thinking, a comprehensive LibGuide on AI for teaching and learning.

Data Security

• Treat information given to an AI tool (like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot) as if it were public; do not share information that is personal, confidential, or proprietary intellectual property
• Review Macalester’s policy on Protecting Sensitive Information and avoid entering data that may fall into the moderate or high-risk data categories. Use Macalester’s Data Classification Policy to understand these privacy levels.
• Be especially careful with sensitive data when using AI tools and consider whether the data you are using will compromise regulatory, contractual, or legal obligations.
• When creating prompts, anonymize personally identifiable information (PII). If possible, use settings that ensure inputs are not retained by the AI or are not used to feed public language models.
• Be aware of intellectual property and confidentiality concerns: do not enter proprietary information into an AI tool. 

Usage and Output

• Closely monitor output from AI tools and be aware that responses sometimes contain subtle but meaningful hallucinations, uncited intellectual property, factual errors and biased or inappropriate statements. Always use your judgment when analyzing AI responses.

Research and Publication

• Faculty are individually responsible for maintaining research integrity, rigor and reproducibility of their work. Some academic publications have prohibited the use of generative AI tools in manuscripts, and federal granting agencies have emerging regulations prohibiting their use in submissions and reviews. In this rapidly evolving landscape, familiarize yourself with funding agency and publication guidelines to ensure compliance.

Purchasing

• When purchasing AI tools or adding AI tools to existing software, contact ITS so we can work through security, reliability, and performance concerns with you.