Skip to Main Content

Using AI as a Richmont Student: Best Practices for Use of AI

RGU Policy & Philosophy

Official Richmont Graduate University Statement on Student Use of AI (from Academic Integrity Policy)

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a powerful and valuable tool in education and, as such, must be used with caution and discernment. Students may use any artificial intelligence tool which is provided by the university for their benefit. Artificial intelligence may not be used to generate content that is presented as original work assigned to the student, nor may it be used to substantially modify existing work to the extent that it no longer reflects the student’s own words or voice. Additionally, students may not use AI to circumvent assigned readings. Students are required to cite any use of artificial intelligence in any coursework. Further, students may be required to submit any prompts and responses created using artificial intelligence for assigned coursework. For appropriate use of artificial intelligence, students are to refer to and abide by the most recent version of Richmont Graduate University’s Best Practices for Use of Artificial Intelligence at Richmont Graduate University. When in doubt about the appropriate use of AI, students should consult with their professors. Of particular importance, students must exercise extreme caution and wisdom when considering the use of AI in relation to any clinical cases, ensuring that no personal, identifying, or confidential client information is ever shared with AI tools. Professors may choose to disallow or restrict the use of artificial intelligence at their discretion.

Library Philosophy on AI

AI tools should be used only as an aid—a guide on the side. When in doubt, think about what types of tasks you'd be willing to ask a library staff member to help you with. If it's something they could reasonably help with or complete for you, then it should be all right to use AI to help with that task. If it's not, then it's best to avoid using AI. Reading and writing are the work of learning, and to automate learning is to subvert it. We believe that God has given humans the ability to think and reason and that we should use these abilities to glorify Him through our learning; we believe that we should not turn these abilities over to human-created technologies.

Dos and Don'ts of AI Use

GREEN LIGHT

  • Text-to-Speech Readers
  • Grammarly Premium
  • Personal Research Assistants
    • Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote (free accounts available)
    • Help with collecting, organizing, annotating, and citing research
  • Semantic search tools
    • Research Rabbit or Connected Papers
    • These tools rely on the sources you have already found through GALILEO or Google Scholar and can help you find additional sources. You must check all results you use to ensure they actually exist, as AI can hallucinate non-existent sources.
  • Other tools to organize your research and to help you format and manage citations 
    • Citation generators, such as EasyBib, Citation Machine, or the GALILEO citation tool
    • Use with caution and double-check for accuracy and formatting.
  • You may request assistance from Richmont’s librarians with any aspect of research here.

YELLOW LIGHT

  • Tools for research – You must cite the prompt you used, the AI tool you used, and the results.
  • Tools to organize an outline from ideas you have generated on your own.
  • AI research assistants used with a citation management tool. For example, Aria Integration with Zotero or Research Rabbit with Zotero. These allow you to chat with the references that you have collected and to compare papers that you have collected.
  • Speech-to-Text apps
  • Generative AI programs (such as ChatGPT) to support various research tasks—see section on citing AI tools and be extremely cautious when using

RED LIGHT

  • Any tool that replaces your original thinking, synthesis, and learning.
  • Any tool that does the process for you on a process-oriented assignment

For example:

  • If your assignment is to create a literature review, you may not use any tool that creates a literature review for you.
  • If you have been assigned reading, you are expected to read the article, chapter, or book yourself. Only after you have completed assigned readings may you use an AI tool to summarize such reading.

All work you submit must be your own. You may not use AI tools to generate the writing of any part of any assignment.

What Is AI?

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a field of computer science that focuses on enabling computers and machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence.
AI is embedded in many services we use daily, such as email spam filtering, voice assistants, content recommendations by services such as Netflix and Amazon, apps, and websites we use. Spell checkers, writing assistants, citation generators, search engines, interactive maps, and many other daily applications are also AI-powered.  (https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/artificial-intelligence)

The big thing to understand is that AI is powered by mathematical processes, or algorithms, rather than by computer programming. Computer programming requires a programmer to address and code for every possible situation the machine might encounter. In contrast, a computer using multiple algorithms to process and interpret data can "learn" from data and respond to situations more flexibly. Despite the advances with AI, it is not a human brain, and it is helpful to know a little about AI in order to temper your expectations of its capabilities. Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, will produce plausible and probable results for your queries, but currently those results can be false, such as hallucinated sources. It is a bit "like a raccoon rifling through trash and presenting glitter as treasure," or "like a dog proudly bringing you a stick, convinced it's a squirrel" -- ChatGPT generated both of these analogies at my request.

While it might seem that AI is a new part of our lives, it has actually been around since the 1950s, when early programmers began teaching machines to process information the way that humans do. From there, programmers were able to develop machine learning systems, which are able to apply historical data to other situations, thus creating predictions and further enhancing performance. 

What we tend to think of as AI is deep learning and generative AI. Deep learning refers to a system that closely mimics the process of human thought and does not require human supervision. Instead, deep learning systems can process large sets of data on their own and make predictions based on that information. Finally, generative AI, sometimes called gen AI, "refers to deep learning models that can create complex original content such as long-form text, high-quality images, realistic video or audio and more in response to a user’s prompt or request." (Stryker & Kavlakoglu, 2024). ChatGPT and other similar programs run on gen AI. 

Generative AI involves three steps: training, tuning, and generation/evaluation/more tuning. This is important to remember, as even the developers who create these models realize that they are not perfect and are constantly revising them. At this point, most gen AI programs are essentially prediction models that create likely accurate responses, but they are still deeply flawed in some ways. This is why we strongly discourage using gen AI programs, such as ChatGPT, to pull sources or create content for your classwork. Aside from the ethical dilemma of relying on a machine to complete your work for you, consider the fact that much of the information obtained from these sources is inaccurate.

 

Henrik Kniberg (Jan 20, 2024) Generative AI in a Nutshell - how to survive and thrive in the age of AI. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IK3DFHRFfw.

AI Tools & How to Cite Them

Even though these tools use AI, you don't need to cite them within your papers, as they aren't doing any work for you:

Grammar and spelling assistants, like Grammarly: While Grammarly does have a GenAI component, the Richmont premium account has this feature disabled. Students are encouraged to use the Richmont account for Grammarly access only.

Text-to-Speech Readers, like Natural Readers, GPT Reader, or TextSpeakPro: There are many free extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge that will read text aloud for you. 

GALILEO Citation Generator: GALILEO will create citations for each source you locate there. Simply click the quotation marks in the top right of the source page and select APA format. You should double-check these citations for completion, accuracy, and formatting.

Research support tools, like ResearchRabbit, Connected Papers, Zotero, and Semantic Scholar: After finding the sources you need from reputable places like GALILEO or Google Scholar, you may want to use software that helps you manage your sources, create citations, and locate additional information. These programs can assist with those tasks, but as always, be sure to verify the information you get from these resources, as their AI models are prone to creating false or non-existent results.

If you obtain permission from your instructor to use ChatGPT or another GenAI model for a specific aspect of your research, you must cite it very carefully. These are the most recent guidelines provided by the American Psychological Association.

Quoting/paraphrasing ChatGPT

  • Include the prompt that you used
  • Include the response you received, whether you choose to quote directly or paraphrase
  • Indicate which model you used

Example of description and in-text citation:

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notion that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

Example of reference page entry:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

For studies you have conducted, describe the use of GenAI in your Research Methods section. This is only done for studies you have conducted on your own, such as those done in thesis projects. Some scholars use AI for generating data reports or conducting other study-specific tasks, but you must be cautious to avoid including any personal or clinical information. You must obtain permission from your project advisor/supervisor to use GenAI in this way. 

For literature reviews, describe the use of AI in your introduction. You may also want to include a lengthier description in an appendix, including any prompts you wrote and the responses you received from the AI model.

For more information, see the APA Style Blog's entry on How to Cite ChatGPT. While they refer to ChatGPT specifically, the ideas apply to other models.