Terms

Index terms of use

Last updated 28 October 2026

These are the terms for any index you answer on Benchmark Lab - the AI Adoption Index, the AI Governance Index, the Personal AI Index, and any other published here. They are short and in plain English. You agree to them when you start.

One page covers all of them on purpose. The questions differ from one index to the next, but what we ask of you, what you get back, and what we do and do not promise are the same in every case. Every index is one of two kinds: an organisation index asks about your organisation, and a personal index asks about you. Where the two differ, this page says so, and each index's own page says which kind it is before you begin.

1. Who we are

Benchmark Lab is a trading name of The AI Adoption Lab Limited, a company registered in Scotland under company number SC900444, whose registered office is 5 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4AN. In these terms, "we" and "us" mean The AI Adoption Lab Limited, "you" means you, the person taking part, and an "index" means whichever of our indices you are answering. A partner may have introduced you to it - a membership body, a trade association, an IT partner, or The AI Lab, which is another trading name of this same company. Whoever introduced you, the index is ours and these terms are between you and us.

2. What an index is

A short set of plain-English questions: about your organisation, or on a personal index about you and your own work. Each one tells you before you start how many questions it asks and roughly how long it takes; they are a few minutes each, not an afternoon. At the end you get your result: where you stand, and what to do next.

It is a reading, not advice. It tells you how you answered a set of questions. It is not professional, legal, financial or technical advice, it is not a qualification, it is not an audit or a certification, and it is not an assessment of how good you are at your job. Do not use it as the only basis for a decision that matters - yours or anyone else's.

3. Taking part is your choice

You do not have to answer an index, even if someone at work asked you to. You can stop at any point, and you can close the page without finishing. If you would rather not take part, tell us and we will stop the reminders.

Whether you answer, and what you answer, is between you and us. We describe who sees what before you start, and in our privacy notice.

4. Answer as yourself

Please answer honestly: on a personal index, about yourself; on an organisation index, about your organisation as you see it. Do not answer an index as somebody else, and do not fill one in on a colleague's behalf. A result built from someone else's answers is no use to anybody, and a combined picture built from them is worse than no picture at all.

5. Your answers

What we do with your answers, how long we keep them, and the choices you have are all in our privacy notice. The short version: on a personal index, your answers and your result are yours, and nobody at your work sees either. On an organisation index, you answer for your organisation, as explained below.

On an organisation index, you answer for your organisation. Your organisation decides who answers it and how many. If you answer one it has not asked you to, your result is your own and is not counted. Where your organisation allows it, you can ask for it to be counted: that tells the people who run your organisation that you answered that index and when, never your answers or your result, and it counts only if one of them agrees. You can withdraw the request until then. Their answers are combined, question by question, into the organisation's result, which everybody there who can open its report sees, from the first person who answers. If you are the only person who has answered, the organisation's result is your answers, rounded. The report never shows anyone's answers question by question.

On a personal index, your result is yours. Nobody at your work sees it. Where you take one through a link your organisation gave you, your answers can count towards combined figures for your organisation, from enough people that nobody's result can be picked out, and never as your own result; the page says so before you start.

Your answers, and the results we work out from them, go into our benchmark, and that is part of what a free index is. We use them to produce our published benchmark of how businesses are using AI, to see how it changes over time, and to improve the index itself. We publish only grouped findings, and nothing we publish identifies you or your organisation.

On a personal index, your answers and the results we work out from them go into our research. We use them, without your name, to produce our published benchmark of how people use AI in their work, to see how it changes over time, and to improve the index itself, on the same basis as above: it is part of what a free index is. We publish only broad groups, and nothing we publish identifies you. Your answers to its Care questions, on checking, boundaries and openness, are kept only for the time our privacy notice gives, and our research record never holds them, only the scores worked out from them. None of this shows your organisation your result: what it can see of a personal index is only the combined figures described above. You can object to all of it as described below, and you keep your result.

There are things we do not do with them, and it is worth saying which. We do not use your answers to train or fine-tune AI models. We never sell or license any organisation's data, and we name an organisation to a partner, show a partner its figures, or prepare a report about it for a partner, only where whoever runs that organisation has told us to. Nobody outside our company receives your answers to the questions. If a partner introduced you - a membership body, trade association or IT partner whose link you used - we tell them how their round went: how many organisations took part and, for each, roughly how many people responded, as a range rather than an exact number. We do not name an organisation to them, and we do not show them its combined score for the index, unless whoever runs that organisation chooses to share with that partner; where it does, the minimum is the same one we apply to any combined result, and below it there is no figure at all rather than a hidden one. That minimum is for a personal index's combined figures; on an organisation index, the partner sees the organisation's own combined result, rounded, made from the answers of everyone who answered for it, and not its report. A partner never opens an organisation's own report, on any index. What a partner your organisation shares with can have is its own report: an Account Manager Report about your organisation, prepared for the people at that partner who work with it; our privacy notice explains it, and it contains nobody's answers, except that where an organisation's figures are made from one person's answers, they are that person's answers, rounded. They never see who you are, they never see your own answers, and they never see your own result, unless you choose to connect your results to a partner's site, and then only to show them to you there. You choose which indices, and you can stop at any time. Where you sign in to The AI Lab's site, which is this same company, with the same email address you use here, it shows you your latest result on each of our indices it offers, however you took it, without your choosing to connect, only to you; you can stop this at any time under Connected sites on your Benchmark Lab page. Where you took a personal index through The AI Lab, The AI Lab also sees your name and your scores on that index, without your being asked, as a partner you share with would: not your answers and not your report. This is because The AI Lab is not a separate organisation: The AI Lab and Benchmark Lab are both trading names of the same company, The AI Adoption Lab Limited. You can stop this at any time on your Benchmark Lab page. The last exception is, on an organisation index, the only person the partner's figures are made from, described above.

Sharing is your organisation's decision, not yours and not ours. Somebody who works there cannot agree to it on their employer's behalf, and for the same reason cannot refuse on its behalf either; the choice belongs to whoever runs the organisation, on its account pages, and they can stop at any time.

You can object, and it costs you nothing. This one is not a tick box at the point of collection, and we would rather say that plainly than let you assume otherwise. But you can tell us at any time that you do not want your answers used this way, and we will stop - we cannot pull back findings we have already published, and everything after that is covered. You keep your result and your report, in full, at no charge, and nothing else about your index changes. Email index@benchmarklab.co.uk.

Anything else we ask you is separate and optional. You can decline it, and you get your result either way.

While an index is in research beta. An index marked "Research beta" is being tested. Its questions may change between versions, and a result from a beta is marked as such. You may be asked how clear a question was, how you read one, or to talk to our AI interviewer; all of it is optional, never affects your result, and is used only to improve the questions. Please do not name other people in what you write. Our privacy notice says how we handle it.

6. If your organisation added its own questions

An organisation can pay to add a block of its own questions alongside a published index, in the same sitting. If that has happened, you will see it: the extra questions are presented as your organisation's own, and the index's own questions are not changed by them.

The two halves are treated differently, and you should know which is which. Your answers to the index are handled as described above and in our privacy notice. Your answers to your organisation's own block belong to your organisation: they are stored separately, they are reported to your organisation, and they are not used in our research or in anything we publish. If you would rather not answer that block, that is between you and your employer, and it does not stop you completing the index.

7. Getting your result

We show your result on screen and, if you give us an address, email it to you. We cannot promise an email will always arrive - spam filters and work mail systems are outside our control - so save or print the page if it matters to you. If you are signed in you can keep a profile and ask for an Index Report on a personal index; we keep both for you and use them only for you.

8. What we ask of you

If someone uses an index to cause harm or to get at other people's data, we will stop them using it.

9. What it costs, and what we may change

You are not charged for answering an index. The indices published here are free to answer, and we do not currently charge anyone for taking part in one.

We do not promise that every index will always be free. Some of this work is paid for: an organisation can commission an index for its sector, or pay to add its own questions to a published one, and we may in future charge for an index or for parts of one. Where there is a fee, an organisation agrees it with us in writing beforehand - it is never charged to you, the person answering.

We may change the questions, change how a result is worked out, withdraw an index, or stop offering one free of charge. Where an index is free, we do not promise it will always be available, or available at any particular moment. If we withdraw one, that does not affect a result you have already been given or your rights over the answers you have already provided.

If we change the questions, an old result and a new one are not always directly comparable. We will say so where it matters.

10. If something goes wrong

We will provide the index with reasonable skill and care. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law. Nothing in them affects your rights as a consumer.

Subject to that: an index is a short self-assessment tool, and we are not liable for any loss that follows from a decision you or anyone else takes because of a result, or from an index being unavailable.

If your organisation is paying us for an index, what we owe your organisation is set out in the written agreement we have with them. This page is between you and us, and nothing in it adds to or takes away from that agreement.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The version that applies to you is the one in force on the day you answer the index, and we record which version that was.

12. Law

These terms are governed by the law of Scotland. If you live elsewhere in the UK, you keep the protection of the law where you live, and you can bring a claim in your own local courts.