AI Literacy for End-Users: Use AI Wisely

ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education Quick Start Guide (2023, from UNESCO), p. 6

The following is based on CEI's Newsletter, May 2023 on short-term strategies for teachers.

Whether or not you use Chat GPT or other AI tools in your work, be prepared to:

• Explain certain parts of your written work in person.
• Justify your choice of citations or sources.
• Answer questions about the content of your work.
• Show outlines or drafts of your work.
• Discuss alternative viewpoints.

In 1981, the German techno band, Kraftwerk released "Computer World"  (nice YouTube mashup by Hayley Fisher here).

The refrain was: Business, Numbers, Money, People.

When interacting with these systems, as university staff and students at a publically funded university, it is important to keep in mind the social, economic, and political contexts in which these tools are being developed and used.

Here are some thought-provoking readings:

• ChatGPT in the Public Sector – overhyped or overlooked? - (May 2023)
• Kim, Bohyun. "AI and Its Moral Concerns. In Daniel Johnson, Don Brower, Mark Dehmlow, Eric Morgan, and Alex Papson (Eds). Machine Learning, Libraries, and Cross-Disciplinary Research: Possibilities and Provocations, Ch.7. p. 73-86. University of Michigan Press, 2021.
• Marcus, Gary, and Sasha Luccioni. “Stop Treating AI Models Like People.” Substack newsletter. The Road to AI We Can Trust (blog), April 17, 2023.
• Weil, Elizabeth. “You Are Not a Parrot.” Intelligencer, New York Magazine, March 1, 2023.
  • Refers to her 2021 article: Bender, Emily M., Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” In FAccT 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 610–23, 2021. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Being AI Literate does not mean you need to understand the advanced mechanics of AI. It means that you are actively learning about the technologies involved and that you critically approach any texts you read that concern AI, especially news articles. 

We have created a tool you can use when reading about AI applications to help consider the legitimacy of the technology.

Reliability

Objective

Bias

Ownership

Type

Reliability

• How reliable is the information available about the AI technology?
• If it’s not produced by the party responsible for the AI, what are the author’s credentials? Bias?
• If it is produced by the party responsible for the AI, how much information are they making available? 
  • Is information only partially available due to trade secrets?
  • How biased is the information that they produce?

Objective

• What is the goal or objective of the use of AI?
• What is the goal of sharing information about it?
  • To inform?
  • To convince?
  • To find financial support?

Bias

• What could create bias in the AI technology?
• Are there ethical issues associated with this?
• Are bias or ethical issues acknowledged?
  • By the source of information?
  • By the party responsible for the AI?
  • By its users?

Owner

• Who is the owner or developer of the AI technology?
• Who is responsible for it?
  • Is it a private company?
  • The government?
  • A think tank or research group?
• Who has access to it?
• Who can use it?

Type

• Which subtype of AI is it?
• Is the technology theoretical or applied?
• What kind of information system does it rely on?
• Does it rely on human intervention? 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

To cite in APA: Hervieux, S. & Wheatley, A. (2020). The ROBOT test [Evaluation tool]. The LibrAIry. https://thelibrairy.wordpress.com/2020/03/11/the-robot-test

A common problem with many generative AI text tools is that they generate nonsense, especially made-up citations (references).

So, if you are using texts that you created using ChatGPT or other AI tools, use your eyes and your brain to check the work. Evaluate the information provided, just like anything you plan to use academically. More info on how to evaluate below:

• https://libguides.hkust.edu.hk/lang1403/evaluate

1. Cross-check what it says & do "lateral reading"

• Check against your own knowledge
• Check against Wikipedia or Britannica
• See if other reliable sources state the same thing
• This is not new with generative AI, it's always been good scholarly practice

To learn more about lateral reading,  watch:

• Lateral Reading (3 min 33 sec) by the University of Louisville Library
• Check Yourself with Lateral Reading video (14 min) / by John Green (part of the Crash Course series)

2. Confirm that any references it provides are real

• Check them against PowerSearch, Google Scholar, etc.

3. If the references (citations) are real, check that they support the claim

• This is *NOT* a new issue with AI tools, it's always been important to do so.
• This is proper scholarly practice when working with sources both in print and online.

4. If you use ChatGPT or other AI tools in your work, you need to acknowledge it.

• Go to the page: https://libguides.hkust.edu.hk/ai-literacy/citing-acknowledging

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Some of this content was based on the work of Amy Scheelke of Salt Lake Community College, her LibGuide: https://libguides.slcc.edu/ChatGPT/InformationLiteracy

Selections from  Aaron Tay's blog. Aaron is the Lead of Data Services at Singapore Management University Library

• Do search+large language models or "retrieval augmented" models (e.g. Bing Chat, Perplexity, Elicit.org) really work? The evidence so far  (May 11, 2023)
• 4+1 Different Ways Large Language Models like GPT4 are helping to improve information retrieval (April 21, 2023)

Using AI for Study by the Flinders University Library in Australia - Provides excellent overviews of the different types of AI methods and tools out there, plus an excellent section on assessing AI tools.

Artificial Intelligence -  from University of Calgary Library. Provides a good overview with short videos.