SCSU Hilton C. Buley Library: Plagiarism: Research, Academic Integrity, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI LLM Tools for Academic Research

As many know by now, one of the biggest issues with using AI language models for academic research is that they make stuff up and present falsehoods as facts. This makes them unsuitable for tasks where accuracy is extremely important, but at the same time, presents opportunities for important discussions about misinformation and bias.

What can tools like ChatGPT, Bard, or Bing do? They can help you get ideas for how to begin your research and search for scholarship. It can suggest keywords, search strings, and format citations. You can prompt ChatGPT to be more specific in one or more areas, but note that the same will happen - a mix of good ideas, wrong ideas, and overly broad suggestions.

There are better alternatives to the free ChatGPT for academic research, instead try Perplexity AI or Elicit AI. For example, ChatGPT has very limited knowledge of events that happened after 2021 and does not have the ability to cite its sources to the extent that Perplexity, Elicit, & Bing can. Do not trust or accept citations that are suggested by any AI program- track down and verify every source that is mentioned.

Gemini
AI chatbot developed by Google. Based on the large language model (LLM) of the same name and developed as a response to the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Bing/Copilot
Requires a Microsoft account or login. Use "More Creative" or "More Precise" search to access GPT4.0. One of few free AI tools to offer GPT4.0 searching. Developed by Microsoft.
ChatGPT
Requires an account to log in. The free GPT3.5 version has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021 and will not provide accurate citations. At present, GPT-4 is only accessible to those who have access to ChatGPT Plus, a premium service from OpenAI for which users have to pay a monthly subscription. Developed by OpenAI.
Claude AI
Anthropic, an AI company, released its latest large language model-powered chatbot, Claude 2, in July 2023. An email address is required for use, and usage may be limited for unpaid users.
Consensus
Unearths and synthesizes insights from academic research papers. Requires an account & login but offers free limited searching.
Elicit
Uses machine learning to help you with your research: find papers, extract key claims, summarize, brainstorm ideas, and more. Once you create an account, you will get limited numbers of free credits for searching. Plus version offers large amount of credits per month, and can then turn on high accuracy mode and export results.
Grammarly AI
Contains features that help you adjust the tone of your writing, detect potential plagiarism and customize your style and grammar rules. It also offers a generative AI tool that can help you create content. Has free (with account creation) and paid tiers.
Perplexity AI
Good alternative to ChatGPT for academic research. Perplexity is like ChatGPT and Google combined. While you can use Perplexity AI without creating an account, signing up allows you to access additional features and enables you to track and manage research activities. There is an upgraded, paid Perplexity Pro version that lets you choose your preferred AI model from GPT-4, Claude 2.1, Gemini, or Perplexity in Settings.
Semantic Scholar
Free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI, a non-profit research institute.

The number of new AI LLM tools has exploded in the past couple of years. I have tested and experimented with the more well-known tools listed above, but here is a sampling of a few more and very brief info about what they do. You can find them all with a quick search in your browser. Some are available free to users who create an account/login, others require a paid or institutional subscription.

CORE-GPT (scans millions of Open Access scientific publications)
DataSeer (scans scientific texts for data descriptions)
GDELT Project (monitors world news and broadcasts)
Hum (analyzes how publishing audiences interact with content)
Iris.ai (specific to chemistry, pharma, medtech searching & filtering)
LASER AI (tool for systematic reviews)
Prophy (ranks articles & researchers for research, review, recruitment)
Scholarcy (article summarizing tool)
Scite.ai (analyzes citations in scientific papers)
SOMA (automates data prep, model training, and evaluation)
Writefull (writing and proofreading)

Citing AI (APA, Chicago, MLA)

If you choose to use ChatGPT or some other AI technology for writing, be sure you are transparent about your use of it with your teachers and publishers and working within their policies and parameters. Each citation style has different recommendations for citing generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Some examples are listed below, but check with the individual style guides for more detailed instructions on in text citation and variations.

APA 7:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

MLA 9:

“Example of an MLA citation” prompt. ChatGPT, GPT-4, OpenAI, 30 Jun. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.

Chicago 17 (Numbered Footnote):

1. Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, March 7, 2023, https://chat.openai.com/chat.

AI in Education & the Classroom

AI Tool List for Educators
Editable list of AI tools created by educators, including text/language generation, speech recognition, AI detectors, grading tools, and more.
Chat GPT and Artificial Intelligence Tools
From the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University
Designing Courses in the Age of AI
Some guidelines from Tufts University
Ethical Guidelines on the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data in Teaching and Learning for Educators
Published by the European Commission, these ethical guidelines on AI and data usage in teaching and learning are designed to help educators understand the potential that the applications of AI and data usage can have in education and to raise awareness of the possible risks so that they are able to engage positively, critically and ethically with AI systems and exploit their full potential.
One Useful Thing
Reflective technology and AI blog by Ethan Mollick, Management Professor at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Sample Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools
This resource is created by Lance Eaton for the purposes of sharing and helping other instructors see the range of policies available by other educators to help in the development of their own for navigating AI-Generative Tools (such as ChatGPT, MidJourney, Dall-E, etc).
5 things to know about generative text AI tools... that might be outdated or upgraded by the time of publication
From Academic BRASS, Spring 2023, Vol. 18, No. 1.