Library Research Strategies

This page provides some guidelines for using AI to assist with research.

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Before you begin to use AI tools, it's a great idea to have some understanding of both the positive and negative impacts of this technology so that you can make an informed choice.

The BBC video below (made in partnership with ‪@TheOpenUniversity‬), helps to highlight five things you need to to know about AI (in about 5 minutes).

Another quick resource to refer to: 6 Things to know about AI - PDF Infographic from the News Literacy Project

AI tools can be used for research purposes, but due to the complex issues around these tools, some specific practices should be followed in order to use AI ethically and appropriately for college assignments and in your academic life.

Some recommendations:

1. Understand the SVC Student Rights and Responsibilities plagiarism policy.
2. Read the Syllabus: Review each and every instructor's syllabus or criteria regarding using AI tools in class assignments. Each instructor and each academic discipline has different policies and approaches to using AI tools. There is no one-size-fits-all application and changes are rapidly occuring.
3. Cite: A general good practice is to be transparent and acknowledge using AI assistance, just as you would with any other source. You can do this by citing the use of ChatGPT or any other AI tool in your in-text citations and works cited page. Consult these resources for help with AI citations:
   • SVC: Find help with citations.
   • OWL at Purdue: How to Cite AI Generated Content.
4. Prompts: Formulate your prompts very carefully and specifically in order to locate only the information you need. 
5. Evaluate: If you are unable locate author(s) and if there are no references or links to any outside research or information included, it is likely generated by an AI or is just not a reliable source.
6. Ask: If you need help or have any additional questions about using AI, reach out to your instructor or a librarian.

Is AI a reliable source for academic research?

Most of the time, no.

Why?

1. Limitations: AI has limitations in terms of what it can access. AI tools (especially the free ones) can usually only provide information and research up to a certain date. This means that often it cannot access the most current research. Your results could potentially be out of date or provide obsolete information.
2. Accuracy: AI is only as accurate as the information it can gather from available sources. It is like a really good pattern recognition and prediction program that is trained on only the data that it can find. Additionally, a good research project usually includes a wide range of appropriate sources.
   • Consult an SVC librarian for help with the research process.
3. Hallucinations: Be aware that AI sometimes hallucinates, or makes things up, in order to deliver a result. This means that results can be misleading, wrong, or incorrect but often seem like they are accurate.
4. Bias: AI is known to biased. As it can be trained on data that is biased, the results will reflect bias as well. It perpetuates the data it is trained on and does not distinguish reliable data from biased data. Garbage in, garbage out.
5. Impacts: There are multiple ethical considerations such as environmental impacts, increased energy usage, copyright infringement, impacts on jobs, healthcare, journalism, and many other aspects that we are just beginning to understand regarding the ripple effects of AI usage. Additionally, using these tools may have significant impacts that we may not even fully know yet, so take care and exercise restraint and be intentional with how and when you choose to implement them.
6. Privacy: It is important to be aware that when using AI tools, you are providing your personal information to the companies that own them. Be cautious with the kind of information you share with an AI tool. Avoid sharing sensitive or personal information.
   • More about privacy issues.
7. Critical Thinking: Using AI tools can place the work of critically thinking, a human ability usually encouraged in academic work, outside the human and onto the technology. It could be argued that developing critical thinking skills could be a reason to attend college in the first place. Using AI tools simply to avoid struggling offloads the work that you might be better off doing on your own. Before using AI, try asking yourself if the tool will enhance or replace your own critical thinking.
8. Detection: AI results are everywhere and are becoming more difficult to detect. Practice skepticism and verify your sources all the time.
   • Test your abilities with this quick AI or Human quiz. We often think we are better at AI detection than we actually are.

Simple strategies for avoiding AI results:

1. When you do a Google or other browser search often the AI results show up at the top of the list. Avoid the AI results and instead, look at the original links to resources that the AI provides, these reflect the original places that have been accessed to produce the AI result. Using those original sources for your research means it will be more reliable, easier to evaluate, and easier to cite.
2. When you enter a search in Google and you don't want AI assistance, write -ai after your terms to exclude AI results
3. Practice evaluating all of your sources.

The following suggestions are some suitable ways to use AI for class, provided students check with instructors beforehand.

1. Definitions: Searching AI for basic definitions and to develop your understanding of a topic before starting in-depth research is usually fine as long as students understand the unreliable nature of AI as a source, make an effort to verify information by going outside the tool, and by consulting a wide range of additional sources. See the Evaluating Sources page in this guide for help.
2. Study Questions: Ask an AI tool to supply study questions on a topic in order to practice your understanding or to prep for tests.
3. Search Terms: Prompt the AI to provide some specific search terms or keywords on a topic to use in order to locate information in an external research tool such as an SVC database or Google Scholar.
4. Refine Research Questions: AI can help to focus or refine an overly vague research question.
5. Citations: Use AI to assist you with developing accurate citation formatting for works cited pages.
6. Use certain AI tools: Many discplines now have a variety of AI tools that are important to be aware of within that area of study. Students will need to learn to use these tools in order to be current in the field.
7. One last reminder - use only as prompted and guided by your instructor(s).