ChatGPT and Generative AI

ChatGPT is a powerful tool, but it has limitations. Here are some things students should avoid using ChatGPT for:

Original Work:

• Writing essays or papers: ChatGPT can generate text that might sound convincing, but it often lacks depth, originality, and critical thinking. Submitting AI-generated work as your own is plagiarism.
• Creating original research: ChatGPT can summarize existing information, but it cannot conduct original research or experiments. Composing creative content: While ChatGPT can generate poems or stories, they often lack genuine creativity and emotional depth. Reliable Information:
• Fact-checking: ChatGPT can sometimes hallucinate or provide inaccurate information, so always double-check its output against reliable sources.
• Providing citations: ChatGPT doesn't provide accurate citations or source its information reliably. You'll need to do your own research and cite sources properly.
• Up-to-date information: ChatGPT's knowledge has a cutoff point, so it may not be aware of the latest research or events.

Developing Critical Skills:

• Learning complex concepts: ChatGPT can provide simplified explanations, but it can't replace in-depth study and engagement with the material.
• Developing critical thinking: Relying too heavily on ChatGPT can hinder your ability to analyze information, form your own arguments, and solve problems independently.

Ethical Considerations:

• Plagiarism: Submitting work generated by ChatGPT as your own is unethical and can have serious consequences.
• Bias: ChatGPT can reflect biases present in the data it was trained on, so be aware of potential biases in its output.

ChatGPT can be a helpful tool for brainstorming, exploring ideas, and getting started on a task. However, it's crucial to use it responsibly and ethically, and not as a shortcut to avoid learning and developing your own skills.

AI hallucinations happen when models like ChatGPT create information that is false or doesn’t make sense, even though it sounds confident and convincing. This means the AI might give you a detailed answer, but parts—or even all—of it could be made up.

Why does this happen?

AI models like ChatGPT are designed to predict what words should come next in a sentence based on patterns in the data they were trained on. They’re excellent at creating realistic and coherent text, but they don’t actually "know" anything. They don’t understand the meaning behind the words they use or have the ability to verify if what they’re saying is true.

For example, if you ask about a rare historical event or a niche topic, the AI might fill in gaps with guesses that sound plausible but aren’t accurate. This happens because the model’s goal is to generate fluent responses, not fact-checked answers.

How can you avoid being misled?

To reduce the risk of believing AI hallucinations:

• Double-check information: Always verify important answers against trusted sources.
• Be specific in your questions: The clearer you are, the less likely the AI will stray off track.
• Use grounded AI tools: Some models are connected to live information sources like web searches. These tools summarize reliable sources and provide links so you can confirm the information.

AI is great for tasks like brainstorming, summarizing, or writing drafts, but remember—it’s a word generator, not a truth detector. Always approach its answers with a healthy dose of skepticism!

What is prompting?

Simply, it's what you type into the chat box. The way you prompt makes a huge difference in the output that ChatGPT gives you. So it's worth learning some tips. Always verify the information it gives you.

ChatGPT sometimes makes things up. That's because it's designed to write in a way that sounds like human writing. It's not designed to know facts.

Tips for writing effective prompts:

• Give it some context or a role to play.
• Give it very detailed instructions, including how you would like the results formatted.
• Keep conversing and asking for changes. Ask it to revise the answer in various ways.

Examples:

• A role could be, "Act as an expert in [fill in the blank]." 
  Act as an expert community organizer.
  Act as a high school biology teacher.
  Act as a comedian.
   
• Example prompt:
  Act as an expert academic librarian. I’m writing a research paper for Sociology and I need help coming up with a topic. I’m interested in topics related to climate change. Please give me a list of 10 topic ideas related to climate change.
   
• Example of changes: (keep conversing until you get something useful)
  Now give me some sub-topics or research questions for [one of those topics]. And give me a list of keywords and phrases I can use to search for that topic in library databases and Google Scholar.
   

  Or...

  I didn't like any of those topics. Please give me 10 more.

If you want to learn more about prompting, visit these recourses: 

• OpenAi - Prompt engineering

Attribution: The information above was provided by the University of Arizona Libraries, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.