Research Skills: home

The information tabled on this guide is informed by the Australian Framework for Generative AI in School, summarised below.

1. Always verify or double check content. 

Generiative AI sometimes makes things up (an halluciation). Whilst it's designed to write in a way that sounds like human writing; it's not designed to know facts. So always check for bias and acuracy: AI might produce biased or incorrect content.Therefore, do not use AI content as a source, do not list Generative AI as a citation or use as an in-text source. Instead, use the sources you have double-checked to ensure your facts are correct. AI is not in itself a reliable source. 

2. Your Judgement Matters: consider AI-generated content as a starting point, not a final solution.

Always adhere to our school's guidelines which is to acknowledge how AI was used to support your inquiries. See the page on Acknowledging Generative AI 

3. Know the Limits: What are the limits of AI's content? 

The following text from CoPilot responds this question: "As an AI language model, I don’t have direct access to external information or databases. My responses are generated based on patterns in the text data that I was trained on. The training data includes a diverse range of sources up until 2021, but I don’t have real-time access to the internet or any specific year beyond that." (Microsoft Copilot.(2024) [Large language model]. https://www.bing.com/chat)

4. Ethical Concerns: Generative AIs training data may include Copyright Works & exploitation of AI workers

There is concern and outrage in a number of countries regarding the lack of transparency and the inclusion of copyright material (without the authors permission) in the training data used. Further, there is evidence that the creation of the training data has involved the exploitation of workers. 
Students should be aware of their moral and ethical responsibilities to observe Copyright Law and to avoid breaching copyright. For this reason, it is recommended that students refer to the source rather than Generative AI text.
It is reported that OpenAI underpaid workers in Kenya, India and Uganda to label offensive data; this challenges the represenation fo this product's technological supremacy. See Perrigo, B. (2023). OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less than $2 Per Hour: TIME. https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/ 

5. Privacy Concerns 

Content you enter into the chat box may be used to improve model performance, (unless you opt out https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-faq), therefore consider the sensitivity of information or images before submitting.

6. Environmental Concerns

AI servers are stored in data centres which consume vast amounts of electricity, creating greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, vast amounts of water are required for construction and to cool the electrical components. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a single ChatGPT request requires ten times more electricity than a Google search.

For more information on this issue: United Nations. (2025). Artificial intelligence: How much energy does AI use? - United Nations Western Europe. United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe. Retrieved April 23, 2025 from https://unric.org/en/artificial-intelligence-how-much-energy-does-ai-use/    

Source: Tije, M. (2024). AI Environmental Impact: Understanding the Energy and Water Footprints of AI Models. Tilburg University. Retrieved May 20, 2025 from https://tilburg.ai/2024/09/ai-environmental-impact

Aside from the legality of student's using Generative AI due to age restrictions, teachers' are concerned that students' criticial and creative thinking pocessses will not be developed in this purely content-based  transanction process. Further, the use of this abridged and possibly inaccurate content may be relied in the process of flawed knowledge creation, and presented without proper acknowledgement. In addtion, for some tasks, machine generated content lacks the depth of authentic human experience and individuality of thought required.

The "terms of service" for some AI tools set age requirement. For example, for ChatGPT and DALL-E:

• the minimum age is 13
• users under 18 need their parent or carer’s consent to use the platform.

However, many generative AI sites, including ChatGPT, don’t ask for proof of age during registration. Whereas others require an email address or a Google or Microsoft account to register.