What is Artificial Intelligence?
Put simply, artificial intelligence (AI) is the capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent human behavior (OED).
Generative Artificial Intelligence
Generative AI is artificial intelligence designed to produce original output, especially text or images, previously thought to require human intelligence, typically by using machine learning to extrapolate from large collections of data (OED).
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that uses natural language processing to create humanlike conversational dialogue. The language model can respond to questions and compose various written content, including articles, social media posts, essays, code and emails.
Watch this video from MIT Sloan's Rama Ramakrishnan for a basic understanding of how ChatGPT is structured, its evolution, its capabilities and limitations:
Potential Uses
Brainstorming
It's often challenging to choose a topic to write about or research for a project. AI tools can help with the brainstorming process, suggesting and refining concepts and sparking new ideas.
Crafting a Thesis Statement
AI tools can help formulate and provide feedback on thesis statements, a crucial component of writing, helping to refine and articulate a compelling argument.
Structuring Your Content
Properly structuring content in a piece of writing is important for flow, to make a compelling argument, to clearly demonstrate work that the writing builds upon, and to construct a coherent narrative. AI tools can provide suggestions to improve writing structure based on the kind of writing, the parameters provided by the user, and the writing's overall argument.
Literature Reviews/Synthesis
If an AI tool is connected to the internet (not all are!), they can be helpful in identifying and summarizing sources relevant to your research. This can be a good jumping-off point for research; however, be sure to engage critically with any sources and summaries generated by AI tools. Beware of hallucinations. Also, understand that no list of sources generated by AI tools will be complete.
Editing and Revision
AI tools can provide suggestions for editing and revising writing, including spelling and grammar as well as clarity and tone.
Potential Pitfalls
False or "Hallucinated" Information
While technologies are rapidly improving, AI tools may still provide false information and/or sources. AI tools are trained on large data sets largely mined from the internet. Despite their algorithmic training to derive the most useful information in response to a user's query, these tools will still draw from all the data at their disposal--truthful or not. Remember, AI tools are pattern-based, predictive machines: They are not concerned with truthfulness so much as generating plausible content.
Loss of Original Voice
Writing is a uniquely individualistic act. Using AI tools to assist with your writing, particularly in the generative and revision stages, may strip your writing of your distinctive voice.
Bias
AI tools are trained on large data sets (including the internet) originally created and generated by humans, which often retain or reflect humans' inherent biases. AI output can thus mimic those biases.
Risk of Violating Academic Integrity Standards
It can be tempting to rely on AI tools for writing: Generative AI is, well, generative. Be sure to check that your use of AI aligns with the stated AI parameters of an assignment, a course, or a publisher, and always cite your use of AI properly.