When Deborah Drucker, manager of prospect development at the City College of New York, posted on the Apra Exchange to gauge interest in a casual Zoom discussion about AI, she didn’t know at the time that it would evolve into an official Apra-PA roundtable discussion. Together, Drucker and Apra PA Chapter members set out to create a space where prospect development professionals could talk openly about how they use AI and any problems they face.

Two major themes came out of the discussion: data privacy and organizational policies.

For everyone, data privacy was a main concern. This is true not only for people working in health care and higher education — where there are potential legal concerns related to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) — but at every organization. There is a fear that an AI product would “learn” the data that organizations input and then make that proprietary data available to other users, if those users enter similar prompts.

There are also data privacy issues surrounding first and second degree uses of AI. First degree uses are when you are the person entering the data into the product. For instance, if you ask ChatGPT to analyze an Excel sheet you gave it, that would be a first degree use. Second degree usage is when another product uses AI on your behalf. Many third party organizations, such as wealth screening companies, say they are using AI to deliver their product. You have no control over how your data is being entered and used by AI in this case.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently spoke on a podcast about how there is no confidentiality when using ChatGPT. Specifically, he was speaking about using the chatbot as a therapist of sorts and how there is no “doctor-patient confidentiality” with the tool. If there was a lawsuit, OpenAI would be legally required to turn over those conversations. He also admitted that he doesn’t use ChatGPT himself much due to privacy issues. If this CEO has privacy concerns, they are also definitely something we as development professionals need to take seriously.

The other main discussion point from the roundtable was organizational policies. While most participants said they didn’t have policies currently in place, many shared that their organization was working on them. For those with policies in progress, there were a lot of questions — including who leads the policies for your team, who vets the technology and whether there were different policies for first degree versus second degree uses of AI?

Even with these concerns, we realize AI isn’t going away anytime soon. Like Meena Das shared in her recent Connections article, there is probably a need for an AI leader in your organization or department, someone who can lead discussions and help set the policies.  A roundtable attendee said the only real way to learn about AI is to use AI. Even if you start out creating prompts for personal use, having some familiarity with how AI works and responds will help you utilize it in your work life.