AI Tools
This site aims to present key information about Artificial Intelligence tools and their appropriate use at the University of Strathclyde.
The JISC National Centre for AI has a regularly updaded list of Generate AI Tools/Providers and an overview of their terms, especially relating to age restrictions and user inputs used for training.
As with all tools, it is vital to consider the purpose that any data is being processed under.
You must still consider if the processing you are doing via any AI tool is an existing purpose or a new purpose.
Any new purpose must complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment, to ensure it is processed in compliance with Data Protection Legislation.
You must consider if any process you wish to use an AI tool if the purpose or chage in implementation may be discriminatory. An Equality Impact Assessment must be completed for any new or change to process, policy or practice.
AI Services versus Large Language Models
A large number of the products listed will be classified as AI services. These are “full products” that may leverage an AI Large Language Model, in addition to other connectors and processes, such as censorship, audit and safety mechanisms.
As a result these AI Services have the potential to use user-provided data to feedback into the product. This may take the form of tracking potentially harmful or illegal activities, or may be enhancements to the product, such as retraining an AI Large Language Model.
It is impossible to definitively indentify if an AI Service is using customer data in this way, beyond a careful review of their terms of use and the belief that these match their practices.
However this is the case for all IT services and is a key element of procuring access to any such systems.
A Large Language Model (LLM) can also exist independently of any AI Service that uses it. Typically this means that the LLM can be run on services not linked to the the owner of the model, and as a result would not typically have all of the other functionality. In this cases the data provided to the the LLM would not be able to mutate or re-train the model.
Tools
The header image on this page was generated by Microsoft Designer, using AI.