Our Commitment to Ethical AI Use at TNC
At Taylor Newberry Consulting (TNC), we are being intentional about our use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our work. While we know it has enormous potential to improve efficiency and enhance our quality and consistency, we also understand it has the potential to be misused and cause unintentional harm.
As with all our work, our approach with AI is guided by rigorous review of best practices in the field of community-based research and aligns with our values that centre the lived experience and community voice of those we intend to benefit through our work.
Here’s how we ensure our AI use aligns with our ethical, participatory, and community-driven approach:
Keeping Your Information Private and Secure
We handle all information with the highest level of privacy. We carefully choose AI tools with strong privacy features, and we have strict rules about placing sensitive information into AI systems that don’t meet our high security standards. Every piece of data we process with AI follows our policy standards, as well as legal and ethical research guidelines for privacy and confidentiality. This includes the Ontario Human Rights Code, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) Bill C-27 and all other relevant legal and ethical guidelines, such as those provided by the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS 2). Once it has been developed, TNC will also adhere to the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) of Canada.
People First: Our Human Oversight
AI is a tool to support, not replace, human judgment. Every AI-generated output undergoes thorough human review for accuracy, context, and alignment with our objectives. We’re acutely aware that AI systems can carry biases from their training data. We carefully evaluate AI tools for potential biases and actively work to mitigate them. This helps to ensure our work promotes equity and avoids perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Our approach is designed to amplify, not distort, community voices.
We believe that the highest quality research comes from a ‘Human-in-the-Loop’ model. This means our researchers use AI to reduce repetitive tasks, freeing them to spend more time on the deep, critical reflection that community-based research demands. We never treat AI as the ‘thinker’—our staff remains the expert voice behind every insight.
Transparency and Informed Consent
Transparency is key to building trust. Our team uses AI in our projects to do various tasks. If our clients and partners have special requests to reduce the use of AI in our work, we will work to do so when possible. Our utmost concern with informed consent – which guarantees privacy, confidentiality and clear explanation of how data will be used – is not changed by our use of AI.
Always Learning, Always Compliant
AI technology is always changing, and so are we. We actively monitor new developments in AI, continually evaluating and updating our policies and procedures to reflect the latest ethical guidelines and legal requirements, including adherence to Canadian privacy laws and the forthcoming Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) in Canada. Our team gets training and we have regular check-ins with our team about how to use AI effectively and responsibly so that our staff understand its strengths and its limits.We also prioritize the well-being and professional integrity of our team, ensuring that AI tools support their work without compromising the thoughtful, human-paced analysis that defines TNC.
We believe that by carefully using AI in alignment with a strong ethical framework, we can achieve even better and fairer results for our clients and the communities we work with.
Have questions? We’re happy to chat.