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AI & Research

Use this guide to learn how to use AI ethically and effectively to enhance your learning.

Each course has unique goals and outcomes, including how you use AI. Check with your professor and syllabus for specific information on how to appropriately use AI in your work.

What is Generative AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behavior

Generative AI

Artificial intelligence designed to produce output, esp. text or images, previously thought to require human intelligence, typically by using machine learning to extrapolate from large collections of data

Machine Learning

The capacity of computers to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions

Effective Prompts

When using AI tools, the AI-generated content is only as good as your question. If you ask a vague question, you will get less helpful information. It's important to understand how to generate the most helpful responses. Here are some general guidelines:

  1. Continue asking questions and refining your prompt.
  2. Research your subject before asking your question so that you use the right terminology.
  3. Give more context for your prompt (For example, if you want comments on an article that you're writing, include your audience and the tone that you want.)
  4. Ask "Do you need more context to answer my question?"
  5. Start a new conversation when you're switching topics.

Potential Uses of AI

Use Sample Prompt
Generate & narrow topics Give me 5 more specific areas of research on the impact of social media on loneliness in young adults.
Review information for a test Can you ask me 20 increasingly difficult questions on the Peloponnesian War that follow Bloom's Taxonomy of learning from remembering to evaluating and tell me how I can improve each answer?
Feedback on your argument In my introduction, which sentence would you identify as my thesis?
Find potential causes of bugs in your code Why would my code return an "IndexError: list index out of range" in Python 3.12?
Personalized grammar feedback Can you identify where I've used informal language in my research paper?
Link to further research Use a tool such as ResearchRabbit or Scite.ai to link to ancestor and descendent articles

AI Tools

Just as choosing your prompt is essential to a useful response, choosing your tool is essential to saving you time. Below are links to research-specific AI tools that are programmed to interact with actual peer-reviewed texts. As always, refine your prompt and check their answers. 

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