How to AI: a guide for students

Artificial intelligence has become a common buzzword, and you are probably already using it to create your assignments, possibly without even knowing it. Ever used Grammarly? That’s now become a classic AI tool. Google Lens? Another AI tool. Just about every computer operating system now includes an AI assistant (Microsoft’s Co-Pilot) that tries to answer your natural language questions as if it were a real person trapped in the machine. AI has been powering natural language search for a long time as well. In summary, AI isn’t something new – it has been part of the furniture for an age, and the technology has just another tipping point where it is capable of disrupting a few more workflows amid media sensationalism.

AI has been lauded as a disruptive technology that will revolutionise our world. It might, and it has been evolving quietly alongside the modern workplace for us to know it is not a ‘born dead’ technology like 3D television if anyone else still remembers that being lauded as the future of home entertainment. It will likely replace mundane functions like scheduling and drafting common documents. There are, however, serious questions about how far anyone will be willing to use AI tools to help them draft confidential policies and documents pertaining to the core functions of a business since the organisation would have to give over to the AI holding company the information they want it to analyse and rephrase.

This might be a sticking point in the march to AI technocratic dominance and ‘technofeudalism’, although it remains to be seen how many less skilled roles are lost to automation in this fourth industrial revolution and how society adjusts to the changes. The first three were unkind to social equity and mobility, so hopes are not high for this latest one, and more needs to be done to blunt the sense of entitlement shown by AI companies stealing the work of artists to teach AI engines how to recreate their artworks without consent or compensation who have refused even to meaningfully engage with the Intellectual Property Office.

Student work and AI

Focusing on student work, you might wonder what is a good and ethical use of AI in student work, what might be considered getting the AI to do your work for you and, therefore, cheating/academic misconduct, and what is still an emerging grey area you should tread with trepidation. Happily, expert advice is at last at hand with this fairly comprehensive guide from our Technology Faculty Librarian, Timothy Collinson, explaining how to use AI for effective (and ethical) study.

Read Timothy’s top tips for safe, effective and ethical AI use for study and assignments.