Generative AI: Supporting AI Literacy, Research, and Publishing

Tools for writing and publishing with generative AI can be:

Useful for:

• Getting started
• Getting help with vocabulary, grammar, etc
• Writing formulaic text - emails, resumes, etc 
• Getting unstuck; getting feedback on or refining your own work; and serving as a sounding board for (non-confidential) ideas
• Coming up with titles

Not recommended for:

• Use if prohibited by your instructor, PI or faculty mentor, the journals you or your collaborators plan to submit to, or other stakeholders
• Current (or future) events or things that change quickly unless it’s connected to Internet (e.g. ChatGPT is only trained on data up to Sept. 2021 but Bing Chat will give you search links)
• Topics that you don’t know well without verifying from multiple sources or where accuracy is critical (because of “hallucinations” - basically all LLMs lie) - FACT CHECK!!!
• Topics that are ill-defined, obscure, non-mainstream, non-Western, or personal - basically things that don’t have a lot of information online about them or that  AI can’t “know” (How to Get an AI to Lie To You)
• Sensitive or potentially harmful or offensive topics
• Anything private or confidential
• Generating whole papers
• Generating citations and bibliographies

AI tools for summarizing and writing papers can be:

Useful for:

• Summarizing and simplifying dense text
• Getting started and producing a rough draft
• Getting help with vocabulary, grammar, translation, etc
• Translating common languages
• Writing formulaic text - emails, resumes, etc 
• Getting feedback on or refining your own work

Not recommended for:

• Writing about any sensitive or potentially harmful or offensive topics
• Writing about or transcribing anything private or confidential
• Generating whole papers or taking the text as is - make it your own and add your own creative spark and thought