Comfort Home

Program/s: All NYSERDA Residential Programs
To: All Participating Contractors
Summary: Home Modernization AI Reminder
Contact with Questions: Osama.Sehgol@nyserda.ny.gov or Rebecca.Gagnon@nyserda.ny.gov

To all contractors participating in the Comfort Home and EmPower+ programs,

This email serves as a reminder on NYSERDA’s policies for all contractors doing business with NYSERDA.  In May 2024, NYSERDA updated the Program Manual to explicitly incorporate the following language in Section 3.11 of the Participation Agreement:

“(T)he Participating Contractor must follow the policies and procedures found on the Doing Business with NYSERDA webpage at https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/About/Doing-Business-with-NYSERDA, as amended and superseded.”

The Doing Business with NYSERDA webpage contains numerous policies contractors are required to comply with including a policy on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Systems Acceptable Use. 

The AI section of the “Doing Business with NYSERDA page states:

AI Systems may be in the form of software, an application, a website, or a feature.

NYSERDA Vendors¹ are responsible for using approved AI Systems in a productive, ethical, and lawful manner consistent with the ITS Acceptable Use of Artificial Intelligence Technologies Policy and NYSERDA’s Guidelines to mitigate the risk of misuse, unethical outcomes, intentional or inadvertent use of previously copyrighted works, potential biases, inaccuracy, and information security compromises.

Approval must be expressly granted to use any AI Systems by any NYSERDA Vendor for any purpose whatsoever related to their work at NYSERDA or for any reason where employee, contractor or customer information is entered into AI Systems, unless the specific AI use case is pre-approved on NYSERDA’s internal AI Inventory. Please work with your assigned NYSERDA Project Manager to seek approval to use an AI System for conducting NYSERDA business.

Any NYSERDA Proposer² who submit materials to NYSERDA that are created with the assistance of AI, must disclose such use to NYSERDA.

Vendors are expected to understand, abide by, and enforce the following provisions:

1. Include a disclosure identifying the use of AI on all materials created with the assistance of AI.
2. Operate only within the approved scope of activities and purposes authorized by ITS and NYSERDA.
3. Adhere to all NYSERDA policies on the use of information, and not enter any NYSERDA, employee, customer, third-party confidential, trade secret, or other personal or proprietary information into a prompt for an AI System unless authorized to do so as detailed above.
   1. If the AI System will interact with personal information, NYSERDA may be required to notify the person and, in some jurisdictions, obtain permission from the person to use their personal information. This will be determined as part of the Risk and Privacy Assessment process
   2. If the AI System will interact with or produce confidential or trade secret information, the use of this information must be reviewed and approved as part of the Information Asset Identification Worksheet and the Risk and Privacy Assessment process.
4. AI may not be used to develop, generate, or disseminate offensive, discriminatory, inappropriate, or any other content that runs contrary to NYSERDA’s policies, procedures, mission, and goals, including hallucinations³ and deepfakes⁴ as determined by NYSERDA.
5. Thoroughly review all AI System outputs (human oversight) before using them or forwarding them to others inside or outside NYSERDA to:
   1. ensure the content is factual and accurate
   2. ensure that they do not contain biased, offensive, or discriminatory content; and
   3. ensure they do not improperly use or disclose personal or confidential information.
6. Ensure that the use of the AI System is fair and equitable to all. Systemic computational, and human biases should be identified and remedied.
7. Ensure that the AI System and any output using AI is explainable and understandable to any user or recipient of information.
8. Verify accuracy of reported facts with other trusted, non-AI sources of information.
9. Ensure that decisions that impact the public are not made without oversight by appropriate staff, who make the final decisions. This includes, but is not limited to publishing or sharing content generated with AI assistance without internal approval to do so from Business Unit Lead (BUL) Management, and Corporate Communications, Marketing, Events Management, Social Media, and Legal as appropriate.
10. An AI System cannot be used to automate final decisions.
11. Not violate the acceptable use restrictions provided in the ITS AI Policy.

¹ “NYSERDA Vendor” refers to any contractor, consultant, Vendor.

² “NYSERDA Proposer” refers to any person who submits materials to NYSERDA

³ Hallucinations – a feature of large language models used to describe an output which may initially appear to be believable, but which is factually incorrect.

⁴ an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said

For questions on NYSERDA’’s AI policy please contact Osama Sehgol Osama.Sehgol@nyserda.ny.gov or Becky Gagnon  Rebecca.Gagnon@nyserda.ny.gov .