Our AI Principles

The rise of Generative AI technologies has a continuing profound impact on society and the daily life of staff and students at The University of Edinburgh. We are committed to remaining at the heart of the world’s AI innovation, while maintaining a strong commitment to AI Safety, Responsibility and AI Ethics.

The principles below outline our commitment to providing staff and students with safer access to Generative AI technology through ELM.

1. Safe

We provide strong safeguards to detect and filter harmful inputs and outputs while continuously enhancing ELM with new safety features.

2. Secure

All chat histories, prompts, and uploaded documents are hosted securely on university servers within our data centres. We also have zero data retention agreements with commercial LLMs providers.

3. Responsible

We are dedicated to promoting the responsible use of Generative AI for the benefit of our entire community and have been reviewed and approved by the relevant University Ethics protocols.

4. Inclusive

Our platform ensures equal access to Generative AI for all students and staff, levelling the playing field regardless of financial circumstances.

5. Climate Sensitive

ELM addresses the environmental impact of Generative AI by offering access to locally hosted, greener, open-source optimised LLMs. We are committed to transparency about our environmental footprint and are actively working to better evidence our impact and mitigation strategies.

6. Responsive

We work closely with our community to ensure compliance and to better understand the diverse needs of all stakeholders within the UK education sector.

Want to learn more about our AI Principles in practice? Click on our Responsible AI & AI Safety pages