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The Guild’s Ethical and Environmental Policy states:
1.5 “No action should be undertaken that will be severely detrimental to the environment.”
2.1 “As an organisation, the Guild shall always seek to effectively manage its carbon footprint”
4.1 “The Guild of Students believes that climate change is an urgent threat, and we as a student union have a responsibility to act in a manner that reflects this [...]”
Presently, one of the largest consumers of energy resources are generative AI data centres. One ChatGPT request can consume up to 10 times the amount of energy as one Google search and can consume over 500ml of water to write an email. If all generative AI models were a country, by 2026 it would be the fifth largest consumer of electricity in the world behind Russia.
Alongside this the use of generative AI in generating music, images and other artwork has been criticised by several arts organisations (both in the UK and abroad). This is because Generative AI scrapes data from the internet and from work the artists produce, which gives way to Intellectual Property issues. I do not believe that either the Guild or the University should condone the use of software that presents so many social, legal and ethical problems.
From this, I would like to see the following policies implemented:
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The Guild to eliminate use of Generative AI in areas such as marketing
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The Guild to discourage the use of Generative AI tools by the Officer team and student groups
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The Guild to amend its election regulations to prohibit the use of Generative AI manifestos in all elections that are regulated by the Guild election regulations
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Officers to lobby the University to alter the “Student and PGR guidance on using GenAI tools ethically for work” guidance so that it discourages students from using Generative AI as part of their submissions (with exceptions for studies on generative AI)