Artificial Intelligence: For Students

1. Know and follow your school’s rules
   • Your institution, its departments and individual faculty members have established AI policies and expectations designed to optimize your learning and growth. Understand these policies and be aware that they may change over time. If you’re uncertain, ask questions.
   • Always check the course syllabus or speak with your instructor to determine the extent to which you can and should use generative AI in completing your course work. 
2. Learn about AI
   • Everyone’s future professional and personal success will be influenced by AI systems. Learn how they work. Understand their strengths and weaknesses. Ask questions, be curious, try things, share what you know and learn from others.
3. Do the right thing 
   • Learn to use AI ethically. Ensure that the work you submit is truly your own. Properly disclose and cite how you use AI-generated content. Deepen your critical thinking skills and ability to evaluate AI-generated content and spot false information, biases and fake images, video and audio.
4. Think beyond your major
   • AI brings together knowledge from all disciplines. Develop a multidisciplinary mindset and explore classes in a wide range of subjects. Develop strong skills in using, analyzing and communicating about data and consider getting certifications related to AI.
5. Commit to lifelong learning
   • We are only at the beginning of the AI revolution. New tools and AI uses will continually emerge. Always be on the lookout for what’s next. Work collaboratively with your peers and mentors. Adopt a lifelong learning mindset.
6. Prioritize privacy and security
   • Always remember that AI systems are not private; you have limited or no control over how your data will be used. Use only reputable platforms, understand the terms of service and share as little information as possible about yourself or others.
7. Cultivate your human abilities
   • Deepen your empathy and social skills. Stay focused on building strong relationships and thriving in the non-digital world. Exercise your apps-free creativity. Keep your unique human talents sharp in an environment filled with AI interactions.

Text adapted from "A student guide to navigating college in the artificial intelligence era" by Elon University under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License 

While the field of artificial intelligence is always evolving, here are some commonly-used terms that you might encounter when using or learning about AI. 

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): "The capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour; the field of study concerned with this. In later use also: software used to perform tasks or produce output previously thought to require human intelligence, esp. by using machine learning to extrapolate from large collections of data. Also as a count noun: an instance of this type of software; a (notional) entity exhibiting such intelligence" - OED

• Machine learning: subset of AI (Tik Tok, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube); "The capacity of computers to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions, by using algorithms and statistical models to analyse and infer from patterns in data; the field of artificial intelligence concerned with this." - OED 

• Deep learning: subset of AI (eVehicles, biometrics, iPhone); "A type of machine learning considered to be in some way more dynamic or complete than others; esp. machine learning based on artificial neural networks in which multiple layers of processing are used to extract progressively more features from data." - OED 

• Generative AI: subset of AI; a type of deep learning model. "Generative artificial intelligence; artificial intelligence designed to produce output, esp. text or images, previously thought to require human intelligence, typically by using machine learning to extrapolate from large collections of data; (also) a system, piece of software, etc., used to create content in this way." - OED 

• Algorithm: "A procedure or set of rules used in calculation and problem-solving; (in later use spec.) a precisely defined set of mathematical or logical operations for the performance of a particular task." - OED

• OpenAI: "A research laboratory created in 2015 to develop an artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is available to everyone [...] Although OpenAI was founded by 10 individuals, Elon Musk and Sam Altman have received most of the publicity. Open AI is famous for its GPT large language models, from which ChatGPT was derived [...] As of 2023, Microsoft had invested a total of $11 billion in OpenAI and is entitled to 49% of the profits from the for-profit arm of the company." - PC Mag

• Natural Language Processing (NLP) (Alexa, Ring, Hey Google): "A form of computational linguistics in which natural-language texts are processed by computer (for automatic machine translation, literary text analysis, etc.)" - OED

• Large Language Model (LLM): subset of AI (ChatGPT, Claude, some open source as well); "a deep-learning algorithm that uses massive amounts of parameters and training data to understand and predict text. This generative artificial intelligence-based model can perform a variety of natural language processing tasks outside of simple text generation, including revising and translating content." - Encyclopedia Britannica

• Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT): "An AI architecture from OpenAI that is used to answer questions, translate languages and generate extemporaneous text and images. GPT is also able to write code and even create poetry. Known as a large language model, GPT was trained on huge amounts of data. Because OpenAI's ChatGPT uses GPT and was the first of its kind, both terms are used interchangeably; however, the GPT model is used by other companies." - PC Mag

• Chatbot: "A computer program designed to simulate conversation with a human user, usually over the internet; esp. one used to provide information or assistance to the user as part of an automated service." - OED

• AI Model Training: "the process of feeding curated data to selected algorithms to help the system refine itself to produce accurate responses to queries." - Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

• Prompts: "The information, sentences, or questions that you enter into a Generative AI tool" - Harvard University Information Technology

• Hallucinations: "rather than communicating to a user that it does not know something, the model responds with probable but factually inaccurate text based on the user’s prompts. This issue may be partially attributed to using ChatGPT as a search engine rather than in its intended role as a text generator" - Britannica Academic

AI systems collect data from various sources that we may or may not be made aware of. The AI algorithms analyze the data, recognizing patterns and learning from them. Based on the patterns, AI predicts outcomes and synthesizes insights from the data in response to your prompts.  

When choosing to use AI, use it as a beginning and not an end.  AI should complement that work we create as humans, not replace it.  Use it as a tool but not dependent on it completely.  

Being able to use and critically analyze AI results gives you an increasingly important skill you can use throughout your studies and your life after university. 

Text from "How AI-Based Tools Work" by the University of Maryland under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License 

• Siri, Alexa and other smart assistants 

• Google maps 

• Self-driving cars 

• Interactive video games 

• Predictive text in emails and text messages