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Student Guide to AI

Are you thinking about whether generative AI is right for the project you are working on, but you're not sure where to start?  You've come to the right place! 

Take this interactive quiz to learn about helpful uses of AI vs. times you might want a resource like a library database.  

Advantages of Using AI

  • Brainstorming: Chatbot tools such as Microsoft CoPilot and Gemini may be helpful for brainstorming ideas for research topics, organizing your thoughts, jump-starting your work and tackling writer's block.
  • Study buddy:  Create study flashcards with tools like ChatGPT.
  • Breaking down concepts: Chatbot tools such as Microsoft CoPilot* and Gemini may help you break down and understand a complex concept or assignment prompt.
  • Translating: AI tools may help you translate between languages.
  • Coding: AI tools such as GitHub Copilot may help you generate new code and clean up existing code.

Challenges to Using AI

  • Hallucinations: When using AI tools such as Microsoft CoPilot or ChatGPT for research, they may make up credible-sounding citations to sources that do not exist, or give inaccurate information, which is called “hallucinating.”

  • Paywalled content: Literature search tools such as Research Rabbit or Elicit do not have access to the full range or full text of articles that are behind a paywall. They may help with literature searching and with systematic reviews, but cannot fully substitute for a human being with access to this paywalled content.
  • Scope of training data: AI tools can only produce based on the data they have been trained on, so it is important to understand what comprises the training data and the date ranges included. For example, as of January 2024, the data ingested from the Web used to train ChatGPT 4.0 only goes through April 2023. If you ask it who won the US presidential election in November 2024, it cannot answer.
  • Reproducibility: Because generative AI tools such as Microsoft CoPilot and ChatGPT create new content based on their training data, the content it creates is not reproducible. In addition, because these tools create new content, you may find that multiple people using the same prompt at the same time will get different results.
  • Ethics, Privacy, etc.: There are numerous limitations related to ethics, privacy, bias, labor and environmental impact outlined on the AI & Ethics page.
  • Legal Context: US laws related to AI tools are evolving, and tools to identify AI-created content are not fully effective. 
  • Inconsistency: Generative AI is likely to be inconsistent in providing different answers for the same prompt.

Information from University of Texas AI Guide.

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