Academic research and writing require significant time, effort and skill. AI tools such as ChatGPT can save academics a lot of time and energy by, for example, generating ideas to stimulate thinking, providing summaries and offering suggestions for further research. On the flip side, using it irresponsibly to replace your own thinking and inputs can sabotage the authenticity and credibility of your work. Understanding the dos and don’ts of using AI in academic research and writing can help you take advantage of the benefits while avoiding the ethical pitfalls.
Know what you’re dealing with
First things first: The author of any assignment, research paper or thesis is regarded as the owner of the work and accountable for the quality and accuracy of the content. AI cannot be blamed for any information that is incorrect or biased. In this context, it’s vital to understand that AI doesn’t know or care whether the content it generates is true. If you use AI in your academic research and writing, you are responsible for checking the accuracy of whatever the AI generates.
So, how can you use AI responsibly? Here are a few basic dos and don’ts to keep in mind.
Ways in which to use AI responsibly
- Use it to generate ideas
Deciding on a research topic can often be one of the most challenging parts of the research process. You can use AI to suggest relevant topics based on your subject area and specific interests that you can consider and modify.
- Use it to access resources
AI can save academics a lot of time and effort when it comes to literature reviews. It can provide you with numerous academic papers, books and articles relating to your topic within minutes to help you identify potential sources for further investigation.
- Use it to create summaries
Related to the above, you can use AI to summarise specific articles that you are considering using as sources, or to extract themes from a specific set of articles. You can also use it to generate a plain language summary of your paper once completed – if that is a requirement – by submitting your abstract.
- Use it to explore research methodologies
AI can suggest and explain the research methodologies that may be most appropriate to your research objectives, including highlighting the strengths and weaknesses.
- Use it to support data collection
As part of the data collection process, researchers often have to draft additional content such as consent forms, surveys and questionnaires. Using AI to create a framework for these can save a lot of time.
- Use it as a basic copy editor
If you’re writing in your second or even third language, AI can help correct basic grammar, spelling, punctuation and syntax. You can also ask it to make specific parts of text more concise if you’re struggling to express yourself. Because AI often struggles with contextual nuances and consistency, it’s however recommended to get a professional editor to review your full manuscript once completed. In fact, this is often a requirement for submission.
- Use it to avoid self-plagiarism
If you’ve been writing about the same topic for a while, it can be hard to avoid “self-plagiarism”, e.g. using the same descriptions of your research methods. In this regard, you can ask AI to rephrase your previous text.
How NOT to use AI
- Don’t use it blindly
AI tools should not be used if you don’t understand how it works, what it does best and what its limitations are. If you want to use it ethically and take full advantage of its benefits (including, for example, using effective prompts), make the effort to educate yourself.
- Don’t use it to generate references
AI tools can provide fictitious references and do not have real-time access to databases or sources to verify references. It can, however, provide some support with checking citations and references and formatting them according to a specific style, but you will need to check the results for errors.
- Don’t use it to replace your own thinking
AI should never replace human critical thinking and judgement in the writing process. As mentioned earlier, AI does not take responsibility for the content it generates and it cannot think for itself – it only replicates what others have thought of.
Don’t get caught red-handed
One of the biggest concerns regarding the use AI tools for writing is plagiarism. Plagiarism itself is of course nothing new, and even before the rise of AI basic plagiarism detectors like TurnItIn could pick up copied content from existing websites. What makes AI tricky, is that new content is created each time a prompt is given, as opposed to being directly copied from elsewhere. To address this, academic institutions use AI detector tools to assess the authenticity of research papers and assignments. You can test the AI detector from OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, here.