Defining AI
Through machine learning, AI is a computer "program" that imitates human like interactions. By training an AI with thousands of books and articles, most AI has encyclopedic knowledge and can answer basic questions. Most AI is also trained with large data dumps of social media to help the AI with creating something akin to natural or current language. With a series of prompts most AI is capable of creating long form answers to questions and prompts. Those long form answers may be paragraphs or entire essays. The AI is more like a narrator than it is a search engine; it responds more like an author.
Because of the training of AI it is prone to certain problems.
Most of these are called "hallucinations", but it is the AI relying on its training. "Garbage in. Garbage out."
Additionally, the AI is programmed to put words together based on probability of what should come next. It has learned what typically follows certain words or phrases. So, AI tends to be generic lifeless writing because it writes what is expected. It isn't creative with expressions.
HIU's Policy About AI in Academic Work
Developing technology has made Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools more readily accessible to everyone, including students. HIU asserts that student learning requires students to fully engage readings and other source materials, thoughtfully process the content and arguments of those sources, and construct their own evidence-based conclusions. In addition, student learning requires that the student’s analysis, evaluation, and conclusions in any academic inquiry must be articulated in the student’s own words, expressing the student’s own arguments and points of support for their conclusions. Therefore, when a student employs AI to generate written text, sequenced reasoning, invented documentation, arguments, or conclusions, the product is not the student’s own work, nor is it the product of student learning. It is instead a form of plagiarism and a violation of academic integrity, subject to the consequences imposed for other violations of academic integrity published in the HIU Catalog section on Academic Integrity above.
- HIU, Summer of 2023
For a Glossary of Terms
For More About AI
Much of this comes from: https://sites.google.com/view/practical-information-literacy/beating-ai - created by Steve Jung
On that site are links to two PowerPoints on AI.
The top PowerPoint was delivered to the faculty of HIU for the Spring faculty in-service meeting in March 2023.
The other PowerPoint was delivered as a sponsored webinar for Atla (formerly the American Theological Library Association) and emphasizes the changes need to academic integrity statements because of artificial intelligence.