There is no doubt that AI (artificial intelligence) has its place in business and, indeed, SSAFA. And while AI or AI components have been around for many years, potentially already existing in software, services or cloud platforms in use at SSAFA, it is the tremendous advances of the last few years that leads us to a dedicated procurement policy and this associated general AI policy.

Specifically, the recent emergence of LLM AI (large language models) like Chat GPT, Claude and similar platforms, that have been trained on most of the world's online content, and can understand human written sentences, have brought AI into the mainstream. Such AI models are able to learn and adapt based on what (text/content) is fed in by millions of daily users. And because of this, special care needs to be taken to understand:

• how each AI product works,

• where the data might be located/processed,

• how the data is used by the AI system,

• how the data is manipulated by the AI system,

• whether text/content fed in might be served up to other users in the future,

• if any management controls exist to control the above,

• ethical concerns.

This policy should serve as examples of how to use AI systems and services within SSAFA. The article will also explain the red lines or explicit examples where use is not permitted.

Please read SSAFA's AI Policy which set out within the following documents: