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Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models

An overview of ChatGPT and other Large Language models: concerns, uses, citing them

Good Use, Tips, and Integrating with Writing

Thinking about ChatGPT as a pedagogy problem, rather than a plagiarism problem, is a way to approach teaching generatively.

Scaffolding mitigates library anxiety, imposter syndrome, and accidental plagiarism.

Rather than assigning a big, summative paper or project at the end of the course, breaking it up into stages with student reflection reinforces original work and a growth mindset that can reduce the perceived need for students using a tool such as ChatGPT.

Read this article by Ethan Mollick - Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class

Visit AI Pedagogy Project created by Harvard - there is basic informaiton about AI, large language models, and assignments using and analyzing AI.

Remember, you'll always need to verify the information.  ChatGPT will sometimes make things ups (known as "hallucination.")

What is it good for?

  • Brainstorming ideas
  • Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper, and providing keywords for searching in library databases (you could also use Credo located in our Databases)
  • Explaining information in ways that are easy to understand
  • Summarizing and outlining
  • Asking questions (be sure to fact check the results).  You can ask a million questions without fear of being judged.
  • Translating text to different languages (not completely fluent in every language)
  • Helping write or debug computing code
  • Humor and improvisation

What is it not so good for?

  • Library research (not yet). For now, it's best to use Library searchLibrary databases, or Google Scholar. This may change in the future with more specialized search tools based on LLMs.
     
  • Asking for any information that would have dire consequences if it was incorrect (such as health, financial, legal advice, and so on). This is because of its tendency to sometimes make up answers, but still sound very confident.