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AI in Academia: Introduction

AI

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Resources for AI

This LibGuide serves as a tool for instructors to share AI informational resources.

Guidance for everyone

  • Recognize the possibility of incorrect results

  • Be alert to misinformation

  • Recognize privacy and information security risks

Being AI Literate does not mean you need to understand the advanced mechanics of AI. It means that you are actively learning about the technologies involved and that you critically approach any texts you read that concern AI, especially news articles. 

Librarians at McGill University have created a tool you can use when reading about AI applications to help consider the legitimacy of the technology.

Reliability

Objective

Bias

Ownership

Type

Reliability
  • How reliable is the information available about the AI technology?
  • If it’s not produced by the party responsible for the AI, what are the author’s credentials? Bias?
  • If it is produced by the party responsible for the AI, how much information are they making available? 
    • Is information only partially available due to trade secrets?
    • How biased is they information that they produce?
Objective
  • What is the goal or objective of the use of AI?
  • What is the goal of sharing information about it?
    • To inform?
    • To convince?
    • To find financial support?
Bias
  • What could create bias in the AI technology?
  • Are there ethical issues associated with this?
  • Are bias or ethical issues acknowledged?
    • By the source of information?
    • By the party responsible for the AI?
    • By its users?
Owner
  • Who is the owner or developer of the AI technology?
  • Who is responsible for it?
    • Is it a private company?
    • The government?
    • A think tank or research group?
  • Who has access to it?
  • Who can use it?
Type
  • Which subtype of AI is it?
  • Is the technology theoretical or applied?
  • What kind of information system does it rely on?
  • Does it rely on human intervention? 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Hervieux, S. & Wheatley, A. (2020). The ROBOT test [Evaluation tool]. The LibrAIry. https://thelibrairy.wordpress.com/2020/03/11/the-robot-test

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There are a number of ethical considerations with using generative AI. Because AI is "trained" on existing creative material (images, text, video, etc), including copyrighted works in some cases, the owners and copyright holders object. Midjourney in particular has been criticized for its ability to create images "in the style of" a particular artist or that mimic a particular artwork. The results are often very similar to the work of living artists; artists who make their living selling their work. In addition, members of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA both cited concerns about AI being used to replace their members as reasons for striking in 2023. (Writers strike: Why A.I. is such a hot-button issue in Hollywood’s labor battle with SAG-AFTRA | Fortune). Janelle Shane, of the AI Weirdness blog and You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How AI Works and Why it’s Making the World a Weirder Place has written: "In my opinion, the most interesting creative use of large language models is to generate text that's nothing like a human would have written. If your AI is just going to lift human creative output virtually verbatim, you're not only shortchanging the humans you could have hired to write similar things, but also plagiarizing the original humans from the training data" (23 Aug 2023).

You should always discuss your plans to use AI with your instructor and cite it in any submitted work. Here are some examples of how AI could be used in academic work:

  • LLM chatbots like ChatGPT might be a useful way to get a quick overview on a topic. As with Wikipedia, we'd recommend that you follow references and check the source. Remember, LLMs can produce credible sounding yet incorrect content, or create references to sources that don't exist. 
  • You could use an LLM to refine the style or composition of (non-assessed) writing. This can be helpful for work or professional contexts such as social media posts or sending emails.
  • To summarise a longer document
  • To brainstorm ideas
  • To generate keywords for searches