AI Guidance for Students

More detailed guidance on what AI is and some of the things to look out for as students

Artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on education is currently a hot topic in academia. But what does AI mean and what are its potential implications for higher education? This article explains what it is and what issues to consider when using AI for your studies.

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the branch of computer science and engineering dedicated to developing computer-based systems capable of intelligent learning, thinking and task performance that ordinarily would require human intelligence. These systems use algorithms to learn from data and generate output based on learning sets available to them. Known as generative AI, the outputs generated include text, images, video, and audio. The best-known generative AI tool is ChatGPT. Google Bard, DALL-E and Co-Pilot are also other well-known examples of AI tools.

Perceived strengths and weaknesses of generative AI

Generative AI has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its ability to generate new content. However, like any technology, it has its strengths and weaknesses.

Some perceived strengths of generative AI include:

• Creativity: Generative AI can generate new and unique content that has never been seen before. This can be useful in various creative fields such as art, music, and writing.
• Efficiency: Generative AI can generate large amounts of content quickly, saving time and resources.
• Customisation: Generative AI can be trained on a specific dataset, which allows it to generate content that is customised for a particular user or audience.
• Exploration: Generative AI can be used to explore new ideas and concepts by generating new content that has never been seen before.

Some perceived weaknesses of generative AI include:

• Bias: Generative AI can inherit biases from the data it is trained on, which can result in biased content.
• Lack of control: Generative AI can generate content that is difficult to control or predict, which can be problematic.
• Quality: The quality of content generated by generative AI can vary. It may not always meet the accuracy standards of human creators.
• Ethical concerns: Generative AI can be used to create fake news or deepfakes   , which can have serious ethical implications. A deepfake is an image, or a video or audio recording, that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original with someone else.
• False or incomplete references ­: Generative AI can sometimes create non-existent references or give incorrect information in a reference (e.g. wrong year, incorrect author attribution, etc.).

Things to consider if you decide to use AI for your studies

AI can help you start your assignment and suggest ways you can develop your ideas, but it won’t write your paper for you.  More importantly, it will not help you write in your own voice which is an important element of critical thinking and academic integrity.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity means taking responsibility for your own learning. It means being honest in acknowledging the work of others. Not doing so could potentially compromise your professional standing, your reputation and could even lead to academic misconduct.

Examples of acceptable use:

Stefan has a 3000-word essay due in three days and asks an AI to create a study schedule for him. He inputs a difficult to understand text to an AI tool to summarise it in easier to read language. He writes the essay with time to spare.

Althea wants to make sure her essay is flawless before submitting it. She submits her draft to a generative AI tool, which flags grammatical and punctuation mistakes, makes suggestions for sentence reorganisation, and provides alternative word choices. She takes the advice into account, producing a final essay that is polished and professional.

Jaimie uses generative AI to produce concepts for their renewable energy research paper. The model makes interesting recommendations and provides appropriate sources, enhancing Jaimie's knowledge and giving their article new perspectives.

Examples of unacceptable use:

Donna has a presentation due tomorrow. She uses AI to create a presentation deck, and another AI tool to generate text with which to present the slides. She presents the slides but struggles when questions are asked about their content.

Emily debates primarily with generative AI, failing to seek different views from her fellow students. As a result, her arguments become one-sided and lack the depth and complexity that humans can give, limiting her progress in debate.

Tom relies heavily on generative AI to write his literature essay without fully understanding the texts. The resulting work lacks depth and originality, as it merely regurgitates information provided by the AI, including references that are completely inaccurate.

Using AI is no different to using other sources in your research. As you already do with all other sources, you must use the referencing conventions as advised by your lecturers in course guides; this may be Harvard, OSCOLA, APA or another referencing style.

Referencing content from AI

It is important to reference AI content you use in your work in the same way you do for books, journal articles and other sources you cite in your paper. A guide to citing AI generated work is available further down.

Guidance in using AI

Whilst AI tools can be useful in supporting and enhancing your learning it is important to understand the limitations of such tools. Becoming dependent on AI will have a detrimental impact on both your academic development and transferable skills for employment.

Here are some suggested ways in which you might use AI tools for your academic work:

Help with paraphrasing

AI paraphrasing tools are capable of rewording existing text. You may want to use these to get an example of how to rephrase a chunk of text. Remember – paraphrasing requires you to rewrite a sentence, paragraph, or idea in your own words, so do not copy and paste an AI-generated response into your work but use it to guide your own paraphrasing instead. You have your own unique writing voice, so use AI to nurture and develop it! This will also help you to demonstrate that you have understood an argument.

Structuring your work

AI tools may help you obtain a better idea about how you might want to structure your work. They can generate potential section headings or offer summaries based on notes you have made in lectures, seminars and from your readings. This can help give your work a better flow and greater coherence. You can then expand upon these headings from your own research.

Understanding complex concepts

Your studies will often introduce terminology, ideas, and problems that you may never have encountered. AI can help summarise and explain these in simpler terms. You can then start researching these in more depth, looking for academic sources on the subject and apply your critical thinking skills having gained a better understanding. Remember to use your discipline expertise and reading of academic sources to fact-check any AI-generated content and ensure your research is accurate.

Finding sources on a topic

Content generated by AI may contain fake references which can compromise the quality and integrity of your work. It is therefore essential you verify these sources before citing them in your work. See below for more information about critical thinking for AI.

You can save the time involved in verifying references from AI by consulting your reading list in Moodle in the first instance to find academic sources on a subject. You can also contact your subject librarian to help you find books, journal articles and other academic sources.

Coding

There are several AI tools to help you improve your coding skills. One example is GitHub Co-Pilot which can help solve problems with your own code and help you understand others code. It supports eight programming languages.

Design

Whilst AI could be used as a tool to explore creative ideas, using it to create imitations (deepfakes) of living people is not recommended unless they give permission to do so.

Critical Thinking for AI

While using AI like ChatGPT can be useful for ideas about how to start your essay, it is important to critically evaluate the content generated in response to your prompt(s).

A critical approach to AI is no different to a critical approach to anything, be that shopping for consumer goods or evaluating the authenticity of an academic article. In each case we need to be raising certain key questions with specific foci.

Context: where is the AI information coming from? What piece of work are you asking it to help with? Is it an appropriate tool to use in this instance?

Intention: what is the purpose of the material presented to you by AI? Does it match your brief? Do you understand the output such that you can judge how effective it is? Does your use of AI match the intensions of your course tutor and the work they have set?

Content: Is the information provided authoritative? Do you know how to check the AI output for errors and legitimacy? Are you sufficiently informed to be able to spot mistakes, omissions, and bias in AI output?

Integrity: Are you confident that your use of AI is clearly referenced and above reproach? Is your use of AI appropriately supportive of your work or might it be viewed as an illegitimate short cut open to an accusation of plagiarism? Are you able to explain how AI has been used to facilitate a more thoughtful and informed piece of work rather than be regarded as a lazy way of avoiding engaging with the critical analysis and attention to structure and argument required of a piece of undergraduate and post postgraduate work?

Summary

Artificial Intelligence tools can be useful for your studies. They can help you explore creative ideas, suggest content and structure that could help you start an essay, develop your coding skills, and enhance your architectural design skills. However, it is important that you apply a critical approach to AI content in the same way you do with content from books and other sources. Content generated by AI tools should be acknowledged and referenced correctly using the recommended referencing style for your subject. Doing so is not only good academic practice, it also demonstrates your commitment to upholding academic integrity in your studies required by the university.

How to reference AI generated material: