American University’s approach to Artificial Intelligence reflects our core values, including commitments to human dignity, equity, integrity, and free inquiry supporting truth-seeking, community, and positively impacting the world. 

• Our commitment to human dignity calls for respect for privacy, autonomy, and informed consent, including clarity as to how the university does and will use personal data. 
• Our commitment to equity makes it imperative that we evaluate the impact and risks of AI tools through an equity lens, including equity of access and bias/inequity in outputs.
• Our commitment to integrity necessitates transparency in our decision-making; to require from tool providers transparency about how AI tools function and what information is harvested, how it is stored, shared, and used; to defend the intellectual property rights of our community-members; and to uphold the norms of academic integrity and the responsible conduct of research.
• Our commitment to free inquiry supporting truth-seeking compels us to pay special attention to risks of both misinformation and knowledge suppression related to AI tools.
• Our commitment to both community and to having a positive impact on the world requires careful consideration of the impacts of AI on the institution, the individuals within our community, society, and the planet when engaged in decision-making. 

American University has multiple roles and has ethical obligations in relation to AI in each of these roles. 

• American University is an educational institution, responsible for helping students develop expertise, foster their curiosity, learn how to create knowledge, and prepare them to live empowered lives of purpose, service and leadership. The educational mission of the institution requires American University to foster AI literacy among faculty, staff, and students including using AI in different disciplines and fields of inquiry and to help them develop the habits of mind they need to use and think about AI responsibly and ethically.
• American University is a research institution, whose mission requires American University to embrace aspects of AI that further the scholarly and creative endeavors of the members of the academy, but to do so in ways that continue to provide appropriate protections for research subjects, to uphold the norms of research integrity, and to strengthen the research and creative ecosystems while promoting academic freedom. 
• American University is a non-profit organization and an employer, that owes its community careful custodianship of all personal information with which it has been entrusted, recognizing privacy as a primary obligation. The university evaluates tools that it provides according to principled standards.  It is responsible for establishing an ethical framework for AI us and equipping faculty and staff with the tools they need to meet that framework.