Why Use AI?

Numerous options are available for students to use AI ethically, while following the specific directives of their course professors. AI tools can be used for academic inquiry and to do research effectively and efficiently; however, caution must be exercised regarding AI-generated outputs for potential biases, methodologies, reliability, and integrity.

Pros

AI Functions - How to Use AI Advantages and Benefits for Students
Brainstorming a topic (start with a single topic, an idea, a thesis, or a question)
  • Use for inspiration or a starting point then revise and adapt to reflect your own thought and style
  • Generates different perspectives.
  • Offers a starting point and ideas for research.
Identify alternative or related ideas and concepts
  • Enhances critical thinking when considering views from multiple angles.
  • May challenge student assumptions or promote deeper analysis.
  • May prompt students to consider an alternative counter argument.
Narrow or broaden a topic
  • Narrower topics may lead to a more detailed understanding, focus, and clarity of a topic.
  • Students may develop well-defined research and writing when they work with a narrower topic.
  • Helps guide and focus research.
  • Narrowing a topic encourages students to analyze and evaluate a subject, encouraging critical thinking and problem-solving.
  • Broadening a topic gives the bigger picture and encourages broader contextual understanding.
  • A broader topic may provide more resources
Get lists of keywords, subjects, and related terms
  • Helps students efficiently search databases using relevant terms and concepts. Helps students target research.
  • Students can generate better search queries.
  • Keywords and subject highlight essential elements of a topic, helping them grasp themes and main ideas.
Create search queries using Boolean logic
  • Search results can be narrowed to include only relevant information
  • Search queries formulated with Boolean logic require students to think critically about the relationship between their concepts or terms.
Identify relevant databases
  • Directs and broadens students' use of relevant databases, including subscription based and open access databases.
  • Identifying relevant databases helps students focus research.
Get feedback and detailed explanations on complex concepts or topics
  • Provides clarification of difficult concepts.
  • Provides a deeper understanding and improved learning.
  • Students can prompt explanations to be in different learning styles (e.g., text-based descriptions, examples or illustrating a concept,, analogies, etc.
  • Facilitates comparative analysis.
Get insights and trends from AI analyzed data
  • Provides for faster interpretation, allowing students to identify patterns and relationships.
  • Students make informed decisions based on evidence rather than guesswork or their intuition.
Assist non-native speakers with potential language barriers in writing, reading, and the research process
  • Improves academic performance and enhances language and writing skills.
  • Provides assistance with reading comprehension and understanding terms.
  • May eliminate or lessen anxiety about making language mistakes.
  • GPT can help explain cultural or social norms and references unfamiliar to non-native speakers.
Provide an outline, a visualization of ideas
  • Helps students organize their thoughts logically.
  • Helps clarify their focus or hypothesis and break down topics into smaller concepts.
  • Helps identify gaps in their research, arguments, or conclusions, enhancing their comprehension
  • An outline can help students plan and streamline their research producing a higher quality of scholarly work
Summarize long text
  • Enhances student comprehension of data and complex information,
  • Provides an overview of key ideas, or
  • Helps to identify important arguments from multiple sources.
Identify Influential Individuals
  • Identifies key scholars or experts in a field
  • Exposes students to a range of insights and perspectives in a field of study
  • Helps students keep current with research done by experts or scholars

Cons

Students should be concerned when using AI for research, especially considering the potential drawbacks or cons associated with its use.

Hallucinations are instances where Large Language Models (LLMs), such as GhatGPT, generate unrelated, false, or misleading responses based on its training data, even when patterns do not align with the user's prompts or conversation. These may include inaccurate references, erroneous information, and fabricated findings, facts, or statistics.

Bias can occur when skewed or biased examples are used for training data, when AI generated responses are based on statistical pattern in data that reinforce stereotypes of prejudices, or when the user's conversation (prompts), preferences, or past interactions result in favoritism for a certain group or perspective.

Tortured phrases refers to instances where technical terms are changed, distorted, or altered by the LLMs, resulting in unnecessarily complex or convoluted ways of saying something simple. This may occur when LLMs attempt to translate sentences or expressions without fully understanding the context or nuances of a language or cultural reference. Or, when words are translated between languages (e.g., from English into a foreign language, then back into English), the original meaning may be lost or distorted, resulting in an awkward and misleading "tortured phrase."

Technical Term Tortured Phrase - Convoluted replacements for technical terms.
Big data Colossal information
Enormous information
Artificial intelligence (AI) Counterfeit consciousness
Synthetic cognitive machinery
Breast cancer Bosom peril
Bosom affliction
Climate change Atmospheric modification phenomenon
Planetary thermal alteration
Heart disease Cardiac malfunction ailment
Coronary vessel malfunction disorder

Retracted Works - Does the AI response include information from retracted articles? Since AI tools may not have been trained to recognize and exclude retracted articles, using information or data from an article that has been retracted may result in flawed research outcomes.

Over-reliance and Dependency on AI Technology

  • Relying solely on AI tools for research may negatively impact development of analytical skills needed for academic success and stifle student's creativity.

Mind Map: How GPTs Outlines & Visualizations of Ideas Help Students

​​​​​Mind Map GPT visualization

Note: For a mind map of your GPT 4.o text, use a simple prompt: "create a mind map" or "create a mind map of above."

Selected References

Cabanac, G., Labbé, C., & Magazinov, A. (2021). Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science. Evidence of critical issues affecting established journals. arXiv:2017.06751. opens new windowhttps://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2107.06751

Osama, M., Afridi, S., & Maaz, M. (2023). ChatGPT: Transcending language limitations in scientific research using artificial intelligence. Journal of College Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, 33(10), 1198-1200. opens new windowhttps://www.doi.org/10.29271/jcpsp.2023.10.1198