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Student Guide to Generative AI

This research guide provides definition, information, and resources for students to understand the basics of generative AI and ChatGPT including concerns, limitations, and opportunities.

As a student, there are both practical and ethical considerations around using any technology in school, including AI like ChatGPT. 

  • Review your syllabus for guidelines or ask professors for guidance on if and how to use ChatGPT in your individual courses, especially courses with writing components. 
  • Seek guidance from university departments like the Library, Learning Commons, or your Advisor, if you have additional concerns. 
  • For questions about plagiarism and academic misconduct, refer to the Academic Integrity Code for more details. 

Can I Use AI to Help Me Write?

Is using AI tools like ChatGPT in my writing process ethical? 

  • If you ever have questions about whether your use of AI is ethical, please ask a librarian, professor, or advisor! 
  • Using AI to write exact text that you will use in a paper is (in most cases) cheating, making it an unethical use and could lead to severe academic consequences.
  • See your syllabus or ask your professors for clarification in your courses.

How can I use AI ethically to help me with my writing? 

  • Using AI tools as a part of the stages of your own writing process can be ethical such as:

    • Brainstorming ideas for topic

    • Obtaining background information to further explore a topic and how it fits into the broader context of a subject

    • Use a scholarly AI tool to locate sources that support your initial research and answer your preliminary questions

    • Summarize sources and generate a list of the main points to help group sources as you build your argument and topic understanding

    • Create an outline for a paper based on your new knowledge and preliminary research

    • Ask AI to review your work for clarity, grammar, argument, and other writing skills

Can AI write my paper for me?

  • Using AI to write exact text that you will use in a paper is (in most cases) cheating but there are other concerns with just putting a prompt into AI for a paper:

    • Generative AI tools are not "creative" and frequently lack the ability to make deep logical arguments. These human critical thinking skills ARE what you will be graded on in your course so why would you want to hand in a paper that will most likely get a failing grade?

    • In your future workplace, you are responsible for the quality of your work. In order to evaluate work for quality, you must be adept at the components of writing in order to evaluate your work. Using generative AI to create work for you will steal these learning opportunities from you. 

    • Review the Limitations page of this guide for more specific reasons why using AI to write a paper might not be a good idea.

Is using AI (like ChatGPT) for writing the best use of my time? 

  • There are many scenarios where using generative AI might not be the best bet. Consider how much time it can take to craft an effective prompt. Could you have done the work yourself in that time? 

  • For example, are you asking AI to generate novel ideas in your subject area? It will most likely not have the cognitive ability to do things like that.

Citing Artificial Intelligence

Citing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

Universities, and many other institutions, are creating policies for how the use of AI should be disclosed and cited. These are some helpful guidelines from Scribbr. 

  • You should always review your course syllabus for guidelines on using AI in your classes. You may need to disclose your use of AI for any part of your writing or research process. 

  • In general, if you use AI to gather primary sources for evidence, you should absolutely cite your use of a tool like Chat GPT. 

  • In general, if you use AI to do simple things like identify a synonym for a word or a locate a fact, you most likely do not need to cite that use.

  • Use the tab on the left to access "Citing AI Examples"

 

Template for Disclosing AI Use

Heinrich Niemann from the Department of Schools and Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany has created a template for how to potentially disclose the use of AI:

In producing this text [or image or programming code, etc.]] X [= the name of the AI-assisted tool] was used.  I controlled the AI with the following prompts: 1.______________  2. __________