Justin Donnaruma AI Workshops

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Researching people responsibly

Roles not lives, confirm identity, verify before you conclude, consent before recording.

Justin Donnaruma AI Workshops

Researching people responsibly

AI makes it easy to pull together a lot about a person very quickly. That's useful when you're checking a new business contact or a landlord, and harmful when it gets the wrong person or goes further than the job needs. Ten rules for doing it well:

  1. Know why. Write down the decision this research serves. If you can't say why you need to know something, don't collect it.
  2. Research roles, not lives. Look at someone's business, professional record and public role. Family, health, home and private life are out of scope.
  3. Write your out-of-scope list first, and give it to the AI with your request.
  4. Confirm identity before anything else. Same name is not same person. Tie every finding to something specific: a company, a location, a licence number.
  5. Two independent sources before you conclude anything about a person. One source can be wrong or have a motive.
  6. Grade the claim, not the character. "The record shows the licence lapsed in 2023", not "they're dodgy".
  7. Ask before you record, and say when an AI notetaker is on the call.
  8. No voice or face matching across recordings or photos without the person's clear consent.
  9. Collect the minimum, keep it private, and delete it when the decision is made.
  10. Say what you checked, and that AI helped, when you share findings with anyone.
Start with boundaries
I'm looking into [name] in their role as [e.g. owner of a business I may hire, a prospective landlord].
Purpose: [the decision this is for].
Identifiers: [company, location, website, licence number].
In scope: their business and professional record, public licences and registrations, reviews of their business.
Out of scope, don't search or report: family, health, home address, personal social media, anything unrelated to [purpose].
For every finding, say which identifier ties it to the right person. If you can't tie it, mark it "identity unconfirmed" and leave it out of any conclusion.

Worked example

Grace is about to rent office space from a landlord she found online. She checks that the company exists and owns the building (property records), looks at reviews of the company from past tenants, and stops there. She doesn't look into the owner's family or home, because the decision doesn't need it.

ai.donnaruma.us/library/researching-people, general information, not legal advice

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