Research Skills: Start

"Generative AI, sometimes called gen AI, is artificial intelligence (AI) that can create original content - such as text, images, video, audio or software code - in response to a user’s prompt or request."

IBM. (2024, March 24). What is Generative AI? IBM. Retrieved July 09, 2024 from https://www.ibm.com/topics/generative-ai

Recommended uses:

• Brainstorming ideas
• Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper, and keywords for searching in library databases
• Explaining information in ways that are easy to understand
• Summarizing and outlining
• Asking questions (be sure to fact-check the results)
• Translating text to different languages (not completely fluent in every language)
• Helping write or debug computing code
• Humor and improvisation

Do not use:

• It is not good to ask Generative AI to write your assignments, because work submitted by a student must be "all your own work".
• Library research. For now, it's best to use Library databases or recommended resources.  
• Asking for any information that would have dire consequences if it was incorrect (such as health, financial, legal advice, and so on). This is because of its tendency to sometimes make up answers, whilst the text is authoritative in tone.

Always verify the content: Think of your preferred Generiative AI as your personal intern. They need very specific instructions, and they need you to verify the information.

Generiative AI sometimes makes things up: That's because it's designed to write in a way that sounds like human writing. It's not designed to know facts.

1. Check for Bias and Accuracy: AI might produce biased or incorrect content. Always double-check information and sources.

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.  You can use as a citation if you have been instrumental via your prompts in the co-create of a source as shown in the feral cat image examples on this page. 

2. Your Judgement Matters: See 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? 

"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.