Frequently Asked Questions about Generative Artificial Intelligence
Page Contents:
Q: Is it ethical to use GAI to summarize published research material?
A: If you need a quick way to summarize research material for personal use such as when you need to check student work or to familiarize yourself with research on a large body of material, then using GAI to generate summaries is probably fine. Remember though that GAI output is not always accurate. To avoid plagiarism, any summaries of research material produced by GAI should not be published or otherwise used without attribution.
Students, however, should be discouraged from this practice, especially if they are research novices. Learning to evaluate research material is a skill that takes practice. Students must learn to evaluate sources on their own to ensure that can find the original source material, that they thoroughly understand it, and that they represent each source accurately when quoting or paraphrasing.
Q: Can I use GAI to record class sessions and student meetings?
A: At this time, it is inadvisable to use GAI to record students, as this may lead to FERPA violations. GAI tools do not respond based on pre-programmed instructions; instead, they have been given libraries of data from books, journals, websites, social media, etc. which they use to form their "intelligence." When you provide these tools a prompt, they pull from this vast dataset to generate a response. The prompts you enter may also be used as a source of data to further build their "intelligence" and therefore may be used to respond to future prompts. Any information provided to a GAI tool that is not FERPA compliant can lead to a FERPA violation. In addition, users should never enter sensitive, personal, or proprietary information into any GAI system.
Submit your questions about GAI to askalibrarian@umassglobal.libanswers.com.