POLS 3700: Research Methods in Criminal Justice: For Students

AI can be a great educational resource if sanctioned by your professor and in adherence with UGA's Academic Honesty Policy on plagiarism and unauthorized assistance. Here are some examples: 

Tutoring:Think of AI as a nonjudgmental tutor or study buddy. Check out this video on using chatGPT to create study flashcards. 

Outlining, brainstorming and getting creatively unstuck. AI's impact on creativity might be a mixed blessing. While it might help students come up with more diverse ideas, it can also cause over-reliance that stunts idea generation. Check out this article - How does generative artificial intelligence impact student creativity? (doi.org/10.1016/j.yjoc.2023.100072) 

Summarizing, translating, explaining information: AI can explain things in ways that are easy to understand for different audiences, difficulty levels, and contexts. It can even translate text to different languages, though it is not completely fluent in every language.

Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper, and keywords for searching in library databases.

Discovering new research with tools like Research Rabbit, Elicit, and Connected Papers.

Asking questions. Just be sure to evaluate and fact-check the responses. 

It can also help you write or debug computing code and even create visual media (Dall-E, Midjourney) or new music (Suno). 

► Read the Students' Guides to Navigating College in the Artificial Intelligence Era

Take into consideration the following when using ChatGPT or other AI tools:

Academic Integrity. Make sure to check your syllabus and ask your professor for guidance. We also encourage students to review UGA's Academic Honesty Policy before using AI tools for coursework. 

Inconsistency. Because generative AI is probabilistic, it is liable to be inconsistent and provide different answers for the same prompt. This makes it difficult to evaluate, and hinder its reproducibility, which is a crucial feature of scientific knowledge.

It is not always accurate or reliable. In fact, AI can hallucinate or fabricate information, presenting imaginary or nonsensical statements as facts. As librarians, we regularly come across fake references created by generative AI that simply do not exist. AI is not suited for information that would have dire consequences if it was incorrect (such as health, financial, legal advice, etc.)

Lack of transparency: It does not cite sources or otherwise indicate what in training data has led to the response

Citing AI: It is difficult to know how to cite generative AI, which is predictive based on its training data, and does not generate original ideas. 

Bias. Tools like ChatGPT are highly sensitive to slight wording changes in the prompts, which can skew responses. They are also limited by their training data, which may have inherent biases and over or under-represent certain voices, perspectives, and accounts of the world. They may have been trained on older and potentially outdated data and may not represent all topics or perspectives equally. For example, ChatGPT 3.5's training data goes up to 2022. ChatGPT4 and other alternatives have access to more recent information.

Further Reading:

Comparing Google Bard with OpenAI’s ChatGPT on political bias, facts, and morality - Brookings Institute  

These new tools let you see for yourself how biased AI image models are - MIT Technology Review 

Students' Guides to Navigating College in the Artificial Intelligence Era - Elon University & American Association of Colleges
and Universities

Here are some was to mitigate the risks and limitations of using AI to supplement your learning: 

Fact-check and evaluate 

Experiment with your prompts

Ground your answers with internet searches. Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), and Perplexity AI use internet search results to ground answers. While these internet sources might also contain misinformation or disinformation, they can link to the sources used to begin verification.

Use scholarly sources for evidence. Try using Multi-Search, our Subject Databases, or Google Scholar. You can also try other AI tools to find additional sources. Tools like Scite, Elicit, and Consensus include generative AI features, like natural language queries, summarizing, outlining, etc. Some even use semantic searching based on Semantic Scholar or OpenAlex. These are not 100% free, as most have usage limits.

Academic Integrity. Check your syllabus, talk with your professor, and carefully review UGA's Academic Honesty Policy for guidance on plagiarism and unauthorized assistance. 

► Explore the Tool Comparison and Fact Checking AI sections of this guide for additional strategies. 

OpenAI collects user data to improve ChatGPT (OpenAI Policy FAQ). This data could be potentially shared with third-parties. If your instructor asks you to use ChatGPT for an activity or assignment, please let them know you'd prefer to opt-out. You can also ask for an alternate assignment.

Elsevier: Publishing Ethics and AI

IEEE: Submission Policies

Nature: Policy on AI

PLOS ONE: Ethical Publishing Practice on Artificial Intelligence Tools and Technologies

Sage: Assistive and Generative AI Guidelines for Authors

Taylor & Francis: Clarification on the Responsible use of AI Tools in Academic Content Creation

Wiley: Guideline for Authors Regarding Generative AI

Springer Nature: Policy on AI authorship, Generative AI Images, and AI Use by Peer Reviewers