There are many different kinds of gen AI tools, and it is important to use the right tool for your particular purpose.
Text Generation
- Tools like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT are great at generating plausible-sounding outputs to user prompts.
- They are very useful for initial brainstorms, ideation, and giving general feedback.
- However, they are not good for searching, or outputting verified material. Even when providing sources, these "sources" may simply be plausible-sounding fabrications.
- Always search for credible sources to verify generated outputs.
Search
- Many web search engines like Google and Perplexity.AI are beginning to offer generative AI created summaries.
- These summaries can be very helpful to give you an overview of a topic, but do not constitute actual research.
- Be aware these summaries are based on publicly-available sources (and so are not necessarily scholarly sources like peer reviewed sources), and whilst the search summary provides sources, it may still have misrepresented the findings.
- It is always your responsibility to verify information (always read the gen AI cited sources before using them.)
Research
- Tools like Consensus and Elicit are natural language search engines that look over journal article abstracts to create short summaries.
- They are very useful to give you an overview of the sources, but be aware these summaries may be incomplete or may misrepresent the articles.
- Use these tools as a starting point to help guide your reading but not replace it.
- Relying on misrepresented summaries may result in Academic Misconduct issues.
- Remember, you cannot use or reference any material you have not actually read for yourself.
