Using Generative AI: A Guide for Students

In Research:

• Use as a starting place to help identify key words to search with or gain a broad understanding of a topic or issue
• Use to summarize or paraphrase lengthy texts when evaluating their usefulness in your research. AI can help you determine if a source is going to fit your needs, but it is always best to read the source yourself and draw your own conclusions about its content.

AI Generates or Creates Content:

• AI is not a search engine. Rather, it is creating content from a lot of information.
• It should not be relied upon for facts. AI often creates information hallucinations and fake citations to support them.
• Double check all sources that AI gives you.
• AI is scraping information without date context, so anything you are given should be verified for timeliness.

In Writing:

• Idea generating is a strength of generative AI. Use it to give you ideas or specific issues on your topic that you may want to write about.
• Outlining your paper with AI can be helpful to organize your thoughts.
• Title or summary generation. By giving AI the basics of your topic and what you want to cover, it can help create a summary or title for your work.
• Feel like you've said the same thing multiple times in your work? AI can generate new ways to say phrases or words. Think small.  Asking how it would phrase something is helpful in thinking about word choice as well as overcoming writer's block.

AI Generates or Creates Content:

• Do not have AI create or largely create your work.  Remember that it is pulling information from across the internet and may be giving you copyrighted material that becomes plagiarism when you claim it as your own.
• Anything that you submit of your own work to an AI bot may be kept and used for others.
• Where do you plan to share your work? If you used AI to help write your piece, it may not be eligible for publication in journals or other publications.
• Always cite the uses of AI in your work.

In Code and Formula Writing:

• For application developers, AI can be used to create sections of common code and a significant time saver.
• For CSS, HTML, XML, and LaTeX writing, AI is a tool that can create foundational code for your purposes.
• For mathematical formulas and equations, AI can generate a multitude of examples to fit many situations.

AI Generates or Creates Content:

• While AI may create fundamental code in a variety of situations, it still requires human expertise to evaluate the code and edit for exactness and functionality.