Shaping Our Lives
Introduction
The Digital Learning Institute defines Artificial Intelligence as the “development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that usually require human intelligence’. Such tasks may include pattern recognition, decision-making, learning from experience or adapting to new information.”
While the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has accelerated in recent years, particularly with the arrival of Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude, we acknowledge that AI has already been used to develop and power many of the assistive technologies that Disabled people use every day such as speech recognition tools, speech-to-text technology or literacy tools.
AI is restructuring our digital environment and AI-powered tools can remove the barriers that Disabled people face including in recruitment. However, the use of AI tools also raises ethical, environmental, and privacy and data security concerns to take into consideration, including the potential risks that AI tools may have in reproducing bias against disability and further discriminate or reinforce inequalities and exclusion.
We have written this statement and guidance to clarify Shaping Our Lives’ position and help our staff, members and candidates navigate the changing landscape and ensure that AI tools are used appropriately and as safely as possible.
Ultimately, we want to find out about you, your skills and experiences, and how these align with Shaping Our Lives. Your application, interviews, and/or tasks should provide an accurate and authentic picture of your experience and skills.
Our position on the use of AI
We understand that candidates may use AI tools to support them in writing their job applications or preparing for interviews. However, we want to discourage overreliance on AI as in many cases, applications are generic and do not showcase candidates’ unique voice and experience.
Our advice to candidates on the use of AI
We have outlined some guidance below, which we encourage you to consider if you choose to use AI during the application process.
Avoid AI-generated generic responses
We want to get to know you and understand your unique skills, knowledge, and experience. If you could benefit from using generative AI to support your access needs, we encourage you to tailor any response so that your unique voice and experience come across.
Protect your data and the data of others
Many powerful free AI tools have recently gained popularity. While we understand these can remove access barriers, many of these free tools hold the data that users input into them and may use it to train their models. If you choose to use an AI tool, we encourage you to check its data protection and retention policies and settings to make sure your and others’ data and intellectual property are safe.
We encourage you to avoid inputting sensitive, personal, or confidential data into AI software.
Consider the ethical and environmental of AI
Commitments to data privacy, sustainability and ethics in training and running their AI models vary between providers. Some AI companies have openly published how their models are trained, while others operate less transparently and have practices or associations that raise important ethical concerns. Some systems are hugely energy and resource hungry; others run more locally or are powered by renewables and use the energy generated by their data centres to power homes. Some AI companies have made strong commitments to privacy, sustainability and ethics and transparently published how they train their AI models while others’ practices raise important ethical and environmental concerns.
If you choose to use AI or rely on AI-powered assistive technology we encourage you to research the policies and practices of the companies providing those tools and to prioritise those with the most responsible, transparent, and responsible practices that align with your values. We acknowledge that navigating this may be a particular challenge for Disabled candidates relying on specific assistive technologies to apply for jobs and work.
Examples of using AI as part of the recruitment process
Below, we have included examples that you may wish to reflect on, although the lists are not exhaustive.
Examples of acceptable use
You may wish to use AI in the recruitment process to do the following:
- Using AI-powered assistive technology to access application documents
- Research publicly available information about Shaping Our Lives
- Helping you refine and clarify your ideas and thoughts
Examples of unacceptable use
We consider the following use of AI tools to be unacceptable:
- Inventing or inflating your experience and skill level
- Using a generative AI tool such as ChatGPT to create generic responses to use in your applications or interviews
- Providing a generative AI tool with sensitive information, such as personal details