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ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Students

Introduces generative AI and discusses responsible use

Use Your Powers Wisely

Generative AI tools can be powerful assistants, but like any tool, you need to know how it works, what to use it for, and how to use it safely.

Every tool is different and has different strengths and weaknesses. Common issues to be aware of when using generative AI:

  • Incorrect, "hallucinated" information and sources
  • Potential for bias in responses
  • Equity and privacy issues
  • Don't lose sight of your goal. You are in college to develop your knowledge and skills. Use gAI in ways that help you to do that, rather than using it in ways that allow you to "get out of" the hard work of learning. 

Keep reading to learn more!

How Generative AI Works

Knowing how Generative AI works makes it easier to understand what gAI chatbots are good at (and what they're not).

Generative Artificial Intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT or Copilot are called Large Language Models, because they are "trained" on huge amounts of data, usually a significant percentage of the information that's already been published on the internet. The models use this vast amount of data to learn to predict what is most likely to come next.

This means:

  • gAI is really good at producing information that seems correct. The outputs gAI produces are nearly always extremely plausible, at least on an initial quick read. 
    • It is largely not concerned about producing information that is actually true. This is how "hallucinated" sources come about: it combines existing experts and books or articles into reasonable-sounding but not-real books, articles, and websites. 
  • gAI is really good at producing text that sounds good. It has excellent spelling and grammar, and on a surface level it makes perfect sense.
    • Because it is predicting what is "most likely" to come next, it is unlikely to produce anything surprising or truly original. It is remixing what already exists (this remixing of existing material has also led to several copyright lawsuits).
  • gAI reflects the data it was trained on. That means that it is really good at "taking the temperature" about a topic: getting a sense of the scope of an issue and what the internet as a whole thinks about it.
    • That also means it contains all the errors, outdated information, and human biases present on the internet. Rather than being a neutral, unbiased third party, AI reflects society back to us: ChatGPT and other gAI tools have been caught perpetuating pervasive stereotypes and biases about race and gender. The tools might also follow your lead if you introduce bias into your prompt and show you what you want to see, rather than available information that might contradict your prompt. 
  • gAI is excellent at predicting plausible answers, which requires a lot of computing power.
    • gAI therefore does not devote much computing power to remembering what was already said. While the tools are rapidly getting better at this, their ability to remember what they have already said and remain consistent with it is limited.
      • gAI will generate its answer from scratch every time, so asking it the exact same question will not always get you the exact same answer. 
      • While the AI will attempt to remember what you tell it within a "conversation," whatever it learns in one conversational thread will not be carried over into another. 
      • ChatGPT in particular seems to have problems with arithmetic. For example if you ask it for an outline of a 60-minute presentation, it might give you an outline where all of the time breakdowns add up to 70 minutes. If you ask it to make a response shorter by about a third, it might take out only one sentence. 
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