Professional Norms for AI Use Across Fields

Professional ethics for AI are forming field-by-field; engaging with your field's conversation drives better norms.

What AI does well here

• Engage with professional body AI ethics work in your field
• Contribute to norm development through writing, speaking, or service
• Stay current on emerging norms (they evolve fast)
• Hold colleagues accountable to good norms

What AI cannot do

• Substitute personal opinion for collective norms
• Predict which norms will stick
• Make norms binding without enforcement mechanisms

Practice this safely

Use a small project example from your own work. The useful move is to compare the AI's draft against your goal, sources, and constraints before you trust it.

1. 1Ask AI to explain professional norms in plain language, then underline anything that sounds uncertain or too broad.
2. 2Give it one detail from "Professional Norms for AI Use Across Fields" and ask for two possible next steps plus one reason each step might be wrong.
3. 3Check field-specific ethics against a trusted source, teacher, adult, expert, or original document before you use it.