Artificial Intelligence and Information Literacy
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a relatively new technology that is developing quickly. Like the internet in general, these AI tools, like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot are neither good or bad when it comes to finding and using information. Instead, they represent a new way in which we can interact with information.
This guide's intention is to help you critically engage with generative AI tools and focuses on how they intersect with information literacy.
Students, please first confirm with your professor that using ChatGPT or other content produced by generative artificial intelligence (AI) is acceptable before using it for any course assignments.
ChatGPT and Generative AI
What is Generative AI?
Open AI's notorious AI chatbot, ChatGPT, was released in late 2022, inspiring the hype around Generative AI.
Generative AI like ChatGPT can learn from existing artifacts to generate new content that reflect the characteristics of their training data. (Read More)
ChatGPT is trained on a Large Language Model (LLM) containing large amounts of public and some private data, largely dated before 2021.
What are its limitations?
While it may feel like magic, the technology has some inherent limitations. To understand any AI technology, it's important to understand:
a) the data that it was trained on, and
b) the basics of how the technology is designed.
For ChatGPT specifically, here are the main limitations that users should keep in mind:
- Outdated Information: The LLM that ChatGPT is trained on contains data from before September 2021, and it does not learn from experience. For anyone using the tool to conduct research, they should be aware that it lacks recent information.*
- Hallucinations: LLMs can have something called "hallucinations", which is a response that is unjustified by the training data. In other words, it creates fake, false, or unreasoned responses. This often happens when you ask for a citation, only to find that the resource itself does not exist or contains a dead link.
- Biased or Harmful Information: ChatGPT is trained on a language model of over 3 billion words from the internet. Therefore, it will have been trained on all of the same biases and harmful content that exists on the open web. Users should keep this in mind when evaluating its responses.
- Proxied or Paywalled Content: ChatGPT cannot get past proxied links or paywalls, so it is limited to whatever is freely available online, within the dataset it was trained on. This means that it, for the most part, cannot reach our databases and other library resources.
*October 2023 Update: OpenAI has updated ChatGPT-4 so that users can enable browsing across live internet information.
Using Generative AI in Research
Using a generative AI tool for party ideas or a recipe for dinner is low stakes. Your dinner might not taste good, or your guests may not like your party, but those are considerably low risk uses.
When you were to use a generative AI tool to produce information for work or school, the stakes are higher. There are real legal and employment repercussions to sharing privileged or licensed information with an Open Source AI. Passing off generated information as your own could be considered academic or professional dishonesty. And whenever you use a generative AI tool, you always risk eliciting incorrect, or biased information.
Bottom Line
We do not recommend using generative text-based AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini as search engines. If you do, for any level of research, you will need to be prepared to closely evaluate the information for both bias and factual accuracy.
Evaluating Factors to Keep in Mind
- Design: Large Language Models (LLM's) are predictive models, not search engines. They are designed to predict what word is most likely to come next. Their logic is based on statistical reasoning, not subject expertise.
- Training Data: Consider the data that your tool of choice is trained on. Most LLMs are trained on data scraped from the internet. If this is the case, even if your tool has up-to-date internet access, it is still only as good as what is freely available online.
- Sources: Some generative AI tools will give you the sources that they used to generate the answer to your question, so that you can evaluate those sources (and therefore the answer) for credibility, bias, etc. Most generative AI tools are unable to give you an explanation of how they came to any particular answer. This is due to AI systems' "black box problem", which makes it impossible to determine how an AI reached its decision. When asked to produce its sources, most generative text-based AI's will refer to their training data.
- Terms and Conditions: We know -- no one reads the terms and conditions. But these tools are still in development, and so the norms around privacy, data protection, and content moderation are still being established. If you're considering using a generative AI tool for a course, to develop your business, or in the workplace, it is worth looking at the fine print.
When should I cite my use of AI tools?
In general: you should always be transparent about your use of AI tools. Since AI tools cannot be considered an author (established by Thaler v. Perlmutter on August 18, 2023), they should not be considered a source. Instead, they are generally considered a collaborator.
Therefore, you should cite AI tools when they are used to:
- Gather information
- Write text
- Edit Text
- Synthesize ideas or find connections
- Clean/manipulate data
What elements do I need for a citation?
For most AI tools, you should collect the following elements for citation:
- Tool name and version (e.g., ChatGPT 3.5, Grammarly, etc.)
- Time and date of usage
- Prompt or query
- Response
- Follow up queries and responses
- Name of person who queried
Current Guidance from MLA, APA, and Chicago
Below is the current guidance from MLA, APA, and Chicago Style Manuals.
