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CHEM6611: Scientific Communication in Chemistry

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ChatGPT & Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Overview of library resources supporting graduate research
Know Your Copyrights
Check the Terms of Service or Terms of Use statements describing copyright.
  • Understand how and where you can use content you create via generative AI
  • Determine who owns the copyright on content you create via generative AI
  • Learn how the company could use the content you created
Protect Your Privacy

While ChatGPT and other generative AI services claim to protect user privacy, researchers continue to discover new ways to bypass those safeguards. Assume that anything you input to generative AI could leak elsewhere.

  • Check the Terms of Service or Terms of Use statements describing privacy practices
  • Modify your entered text to mask sensitive information, or use human assistance to improve your writing in those sections
  • Ask generative AI how to create or improve a type of graph, instead of using it to visualize your unpublished data
Always Check Policy

Academic and publisher policies on appropriate use of AI will continue to evolve.

  • Document your use of AI just as you document other aspects of your research
  • Check ITS, CTE, and other offices for current policy about using AI in research and instruction
  • Check publisher policies on AI before submitting manuscripts

Overview

Weaknesses and Drawbacks

Stochastic Parrot

Digital origami bird created by the prompt 'stochastic parrot'

Generates language
without understanding
Semantic and/or
Sentient Parrot

Perching African grey parrot holds cucumber slice in its beak

Generates and
understands language

 

"Stochastic parrot" image generated by deepai.org.
Parrot African Grey Bird Cucumber by 12019 from Pixabay.

  • Content and quality of generative AI output are limited by the training corpus (?–2021 for much of ChatGPT) and training techniques
  • Language models like ChatGPT are notorious for creating "hallucinations"—such as literature citations that sound realistic but don't exist
  • Language models can produce text that includes incorrect information
  • Language models can produce text that plagiarizes existing work from the training corpus or from data entered by other users
  • Proprietary services may not generate reproducible and replicable results

Learn More About Generative AI

Creating prompts

Generative AI tools use prompts, which are text you enter as a question or statement to tell the tool what you want it to do. Rarely do you get the right result on the first try. Learning to write prompts well in ways that AI systems understand is a skill unto itself. Learning how to write prompts effectively will ensure success. Most of the time, one prompt alone isn't enough to come up with the right answer, and you have to engage in a back-and-forth conversation with the AI system. You will always have better results the more specific you are, the more context you give it about the writing you want it to do. Often, the best results are achieved when, rather than tell the AI you want it to do something, you instead ask it to role play a situation.

  • For example, instead of..."Write a 3 paragraph essay about The Great Depression and government policy."
  • Try, "You are an academic writer who has been tasked with writing a short 3 paragraph piece about the primary factors influencing government policy during The Great Depression. This article is intended for an audience of college educated readers who are not specialists in the topic, and will be an excerpt in a larger article about government economic policy more broadly. Make sure to contrast the different policies of the Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations, as well as underlying global factors."

By asking it to act a role, and giving it plenty cues, you will generally find much more productive results.

Think about including:

  • Specific requirements, for example “no jargon” or specific points you want covered in the answer
  • An audience, for example “for a 9th grade student”
  • Tone, for example “polite”, "informal"
  • Format, for example: bullet points, 10 topic ideas, one paragraph, table, number of words

Practice with Prompts

Use ChatGPT to rewrite the "Procedure" as a methods section.

Some questions to consider when developing a prompt, or in issuing a series of prompts:

  • What role or persona do you want ChatGPT to use?
  • How will you present the source text in your prompt(s)?
  • Since we don't know if ChatGPT's training material included paywalled journal articles, what could you present as an example?
  • How will you describe your audience?
  • How can you separate materials, instrumentation, and procedures?
  • What specific suggestions can you provide for making the text more concise?
  • If needed, what voice and verb tense will you include in your prompt(s)?

Quote as reported in Improving Your Scientific Writing [PDF] by Frederic D. Bushman, p. 46.)

I want you to act as an AI writing tutor for academic research grants. I will provide you with text and your task is to use artificial intelligence tools, such as natural language processing, to re-write the text to be as clear and concise. In addition, the text should be easy to read and flow naturally. Furthermore, the text should use the active voice. You should also use your rhetorical knowledge and experience about effective writing techniques in order to improve the text without changing the underlying meaning of the text. You should consider at least 5 different versions and show me only the version that you think is the best one.

What prompt(s) could you use to improve the "Introduction" section you wrote for the class?