The Use of AI in Branching Minds

A key part of our responsibility to educators is ensuring that the AI we use—and the data it interacts with—remains private and secure. While some AI services train on customer data, thereby posing significant privacy risks (especially when handling personally identifiable information or P.I.I.), Branching Minds never allows AI providers to train models on customer data.

As a signatory of the EDSAFE AI Alliance, Branching Minds incorporates S.A.F.E. Benchmarks of Safety, Accountability, Fairness and transparency, and Efficacy into our AI adoption to maximize benefit while minimizing risk. We maintain a rigorous Vendor Risk Management Program to ensure third-party AI vendors meet our high standards for data privacy and security. All vendors handling P.I.I. must provide security documentation, undergo third-party audits, and be re-evaluated annually or if their status changes.

Branching Minds is also COPPA-compliant, and we ensure all student data is managed securely—never used for commercial purposes, AI training, or targeted advertising. Additionally, our SOC 2 Type II compliance includes annual audits of our security practices, reinforcing our commitment to industry-leading data protection.

For schools and districts working with us, this means you can trust that your data is handled with the highest level of care and protection, allowing you to focus on what matters most—supporting your students.

As a  Certified B Corporation, we prioritize social and environmental responsibility, including the ethical use of AI.

To minimize AI’s environmental impact:

• We use pre-trained models rather than training foundational models ourselves, significantly reducing our carbon footprint.
• We’ve optimized AI implementation to minimize use of computational resources, lowering energy consumption while maintaining high-quality results.
• We focus on efficiency over intensity, using lightweight prompts instead of compute-heavy queries.
• While we don’t yet have formal carbon offsets, our engineering and product decisions prioritize sustainability—prioritizing efficient model use and scalable, responsible AI deployment.

As AI evolves, we will continue to refine our approach—ensuring that innovation aligns with the highest ethical and environmental standards.