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AI Resources

Santa Clara University AI Guidelines

Please note that these guidelines are a “work in progress” as the technology, the law and the University community usage evolves.

Purpose

Santa Clara University (“SCU” or “University”) is dedicated to advancing knowledge and learning, and is committed to actively and ethically engaging with artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies in a way that aligns with the University's mission. The landscape of AI tools is rapidly changing, and will transform the way we teach, learn, and work. A University-wide cross-functional working group has been convened to specifically address AI in administrative areas, and will work in parallel with a working group of faculty and staff that will develop resources and guidelines around the use of AI in teaching.

As a relatively new technology, we must also use AI in a manner that is consistent with University policies and applicable laws, protects our confidential information, personal information, and restricted research data, and appropriately addresses any resulting risks to the University and our community. While the University supports the responsible use of AI, these novel tools have notable limitations and present new risks that must be taken into consideration when using these technologies.

AI should be used in a manner reflective of its inherent limitations and to avoid these limitations and other emerging risks to the University, its faculty, researchers, students and staff and other stakeholders. Two key attributes of these tools are the risk that an input could potentially become public, and the risk that the output may be biased, misleading, or inaccurate. There are risks related to information security, data privacy, copyright, academic integrity, and bias, for example:

  • if an AI tool is given access to personal information, the technology may not respect the privacy rights of individuals, including in a manner that may be required for compliance with applicable data protection laws;
  • if an AI tool is given access to confidential information or trade secrets, the University may lose its intellectual property (“IP”) rights to that information and the information may be disclosed to unauthorized third parties through their independent use of the AI technology;
  • AI outputs may violate the IP rights of others, and might not themselves be protected by IP laws;
  • AI outputs might be factually inaccurate, and we might be exposed to liability if we rely on those outputs without properly reviewing them; and
  • AI may produce decisions that are biased, discriminatory, or otherwise inconsistent with our policies, or that are otherwise in violation of applicable law.

Scope

These AI Guidelines (“Guidelines”) provide guidance on the use of AI tools by faculty, researchers, postdoctoral scholars, staff, students, volunteers, and trainees, enrolled at, engaged by, or who work or act at the direction of Santa Clara University and its subsidiaries (the “SCU community”) in the performance of their functions for or on behalf of the University. Because these Guidelines may be updated from time to time, SCU community members are encouraged to regularly review the most recent version of these Guidelines which will be posted at Santa Clara University's AI Resources website.

Guidelines

SCU expects all SCU community members to follow these guidelines when using AI tools for teaching and learning, research, and work-related functions:

  • Procuring AI Tools/Software (including free tools): Complete the Technology Acquisition Request (“TAR”) process and obtain TAR approval before purchasing (or acquiring for free) AI products or products that contain functions that rely on AI to operate. Cybersecurity, procurement, vendor risk, legal and accessibility review are integrated into the TAR process.
  • Confidentiality and Privacy: SCU community members must not enter Level One Data or Level Two Data (including but not limited to personal information and confidential information) into any public or unapproved AI tool. Such data may be used in an AI tool only if the tool has been approved for that specific data classification and use case through the TAR process, and subject to all approved contractual, security, and human-review controls. SCU community members may enter Level Three Data into public AI tools. Any information provided to public AI tools may be stored, reused, or disclosed by the provider and should be treated as public.
  • Confirm the accuracy of the output provided by AI tools: SCU community members must check the accuracy of information generated by AI tools prior to relying on such information and must verify and validate each element of output from AI tools to ensure there is a human audit of such AI content. AI generated content may be inaccurate, incomplete, or fabricated (sometimes called “hallucinations”), including citations that do not exist. Users should independently verify factual information and sources before relying on AI outputs, and are responsible for any content published that includes AI-generated material. In addition, users should regularly stress test their AI tools, e.g., by inputting simple queries (as well as complex queries that are the domain of such user's expertise) to better understand the limitations of the tool and the types of errors or inaccuracies that may occur.
  • Check the output of AI tools for bias: SCU community members must consider whether the data input into, and the output of, AI tools produces decisions that may result in a disparate impact to individuals based on their protected classifications under applicable law, such as race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation, or disability status. Do not rely on any output that is indicative of a potential bias.
  • Comply with third-party Intellectual Property (IP) rights: Do not represent AI-generated content as solely your own work where credit or sourcing is required (e.g., academic submissions, publications, source coding, or where specified by University policy or instructor guidance).
  • Ask the AI system not to use inputs for training the system: Some AI systems permit users to opt out of the use of their data to train future iterations of the AI system. Where that option is available, SCU community members are expected to exercise it and opt out of training.
  • Use tailored prompting: The information, sentences, or questions that a user enters into an AI tool ("prompts") are a big influence on the quality of AI outputs produced. SCU community members are encouraged to use structured prompting frameworks with more tailored prompting. For example, prompts can include specific roles, intended audience and institutional context. More descriptive prompts can improve the quality of the outputs.

University Approved Applications

Level One Data and Level Two Data (as classified under the SCU Data Classification Standard) must only be entered into AI tools that have been assessed and approved for such use, except as otherwise permitted through the TAR process. The Information Services team intends to publish a list of specific applications that have been vetted by the University and deemed fully or partially acceptable under these Guidelines, which will be linked to these Guidelines once posted. SCU community members are expected to use any approved AI tools in accordance with the scope of these Guidelines.

AI meeting assistants (e.g., tools that record, transcribe, summarize or capture notes) that store meeting content should be treated as handling recorded data. SCU community members should use judgment before enabling an AI meeting assistant, and should only enable Zoom AI Companion and other TAR approved tools with contractual protections. Ensure that, at the beginning of the meeting, all meeting participants are aware of and consent to the meeting being recorded / transcribed. Only begin recording once all participants have consented. If confidential data will be discussed, AI meeting assistants must not be used. Consult the AI Assistant Meeting Guidelines for more information and how to manage unwanted AI assistants in meetings.

AI and SCU Coursework

At our University, it is our shared responsibility to promote intellectual honesty and scholarly integrity, and deep, critical learning which could be undermined with the utilization of AI-generated content being passed off as one's own work.

Particular considerations apply to use of AI by instructors and students. As noted on the Provost's AI Teaching and Learning website: "The question of how to advance the mission in the context of AI varies based on course, discipline, and industry contexts and related learning outcomes objectives. Accordingly, the University does not have a university-wide policy for AI use across courses and curricula. The faculty have a responsibility to weigh the humanistic, ethical, and pedagogical considerations when determining how and whether to integrate AI into their instruction to ensure that AI is facilitating and not replacing learning, is accessible to students, and will do more good than harm in the short and long term. Faculty are expected to clearly communicate their policies and rationales for AI use in their courses and assignments and expect students to maintain academic integrity and live up to student codes of conduct in their learning." Additional guidance and resources for teaching and learning in the context of AI are available on the AI Teaching and Learning website.

Important note to SCU instructors about AI detection tools: Since the introduction of AI tools, there has been a parallel rise in tools claiming accurate detection of AI-generated work. As with any form of detection software, there are risks of misidentification, which can have consequences in the classroom. These products are best used with careful consideration and as one of many ways to work with students. It is also important to include the use of these tools in any discussion with students around course policies, making clear why and how such services may be used in the course. Proactive transparency about such tools with students is key. Establishing clear escalation language, processes, and guidelines in the event of detected plagiarism, at the department level is important. These resources will help faculty initiate and engage in such conversations with students in an open and educational manner (especially given the number of false positives), which is paramount. As with other plagiarism detection tools, AI detection should be treated as a guideline and not a grading metric.

AI and Research

The Guidelines above apply to all SCU research activity. In addition, the following considerations also extend to all research activity using AI:

  • As with other tools and research methods, individuals who use AI in research should be transparent regarding its use, in describing methods, acknowledgements, or elsewhere, as appropriate.
  • AI has been found to, among other things, generate citations to papers that do not exist by authors who do not exist, and has also been used to generate images for experiments that were never actually conducted. In addition, using AI tools to check AI-generated citations has also been found to be inaccurate. Researchers are responsible for the accuracy of any content created by AI that is included in any research output and should use caution in utilizing AI output in research.
  • Researchers are expected to follow the policies of journals, funding agencies and professional societies through which they report their research. For example, some journals, such as Science, explicitly prohibit text, figures, images or graphics generated by ChatGPT or any other AI tools.
  • Researchers must avoid uploading, or using as input, any unpublished research data or other confidential information into an unauthorized AI tool (i.e., an AI tool that has not been authorized under the TAR process for such purpose).
    • When a researcher inputs unpublished work of any kind into an unauthorized AI tool, it is possible that the unpublished work may become part of the universe of data in the AI. The model may incorporate the unpublished work into responses to queries from other researchers. Disclosure of the unpublished work to an unauthorized AI tool may also impede or prevent future IP protection for the unpublished work or give rise to privacy violations.
    • Unauthorized AI tools may not provide protection for confidential information and their use could create the potential to breach confidential contractual commitments.
    • This includes, e.g., unpublished manuscripts or funding proposals that researchers may be asked to peer review. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), among others, prohibit using AI tools for peer review.
    • This also includes the personal information of research subjects. For example, inputting interview data into an unauthorized AI tool to perform preliminary analysis creates the possibility that quotations or other information from research subjects could become public, and potentially, that subjects could also be identified.
  • Researchers should be mindful that the output of AI tools may infringe the rights of third parties since the responses generated are pooled from already established works.
  • Researchers should comply with the expectations of their respective school, department and sub-discipline, as well as journal and/or publisher requirements, as applicable, which may include documenting AI tools' role in research, including but not limited to:
    • Citing AI tools used and clearly explaining their specific contributions rather than presenting AI-generated content as your own work.
    • Documenting your verification process for AI-generated citations (for example, creating an audit trail by tracking the AI tools used, prompts, exact steps taken to independently verify every claim and citation generated by AI against authentic, original materials).

All University research is subject to the University’s research integrity policies, such as the Policy on Research Misconduct.

Related University Policies

When using AI tools, SCU community members should always keep in mind the usual rules and policies concerning privacy, honor code, academic integrity, research conduct, information security and other such rules. Students should review the policies relating to academic integrity in the Student Conduct Code. In addition, the University's specific schools may also have additional rules and policies.