Student and Faculty Guide for using Generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools are:

• Programmed to respond to prompts or queries inputted by the user, and

• Use large data sets to generate, summarize, translate, predict, or recognize text, images, or other content.

Some well-known examples include the text generator ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E 2. Others that may soon become more commonly used in the academic process include Sudowrite, Jasper, Quillbot, Wordsmith, Writesonice, Article Forge, Midjourney, and many more.

Major search engines are also becoming integrated with them: for example, Google Search now uses Gemini, while Microsoft Bing uses ChatGPT.

When using AI chatbots and generative AI tools, never share:

• Personal information (SSN, birth date, address)
• Financial details
• Medical records
• Login credentials
• Confidential documents
• Private student/employee information

These services may store your conversations and use them for training. Treat AI interactions like public conversations - if you wouldn't post it publicly online, don't share it with an AI.

Need help determining what's safe to share? Contact the UO Libraries for guidance.

ChatGPT is fed millions of pieces of writing from the Internet, including Wikipedia and Reddit pages AND uses complex math to figure out what to say next — specifically, a special calculation to pick its next word based on all of the words that have already been generated online until 2021. This helps it make its responses sound more like a human's.

AI Family Tree

What we are really seeing today are different AI-driven applications. Therefore, it's important to understand the applications that fall under AI.

Below, you will find an AI Family Tree (created by librarians at McGill University) that illustrates some, but not all, of the relationships between different applications and AI. To fully understand the tree, see their blog post.

This material was adapted from McGill University's Artificial Intelligence LibGuide. The original work can be found here.

• ChatGPT is a GenAI language model capable of generating human-like text based on the input it receives. It uses a deep neural network trained on a massive dataset of text to generate responses to a wide variety of questions and prompts.

• DALL-E 2 generates high-quality images from text descriptions. It can also generate images based on combinations of different concepts or inputs.

• Sudowrite is a writing app that helps users create their own original writing. It's specifically an aid for writing fiction prose and is marketed as a "brainstorming tool" for writers.

• Jasper is another writing tool that helps users create content after providing prompts. It can be used to create multiple types of original content, including marketing copy, product descriptions and website text.

• QuillBot is a tool that helps users paraphrase their sentences, paragraphs, essays or other writing materials. It also has other built in resources, including a grammar checker, a citation creator, a translator and a plagiarism checker.

What are the different types of generative AI tools?

1. Text Generation:

   • Language Models: These models generate coherent and contextually relevant text. Examples include OpenAI’s GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models.

   • Chatbots: These AI tools generate text-based responses to user inputs in natural language, simulating conversation.

2. Image Generation:

   • GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks): GANs consist of a generator and a discriminator, trained in tandem to generate realistic images. They are commonly used for tasks like image-to-image translation and style transfer.

   • Conditional Image Generation: Models like BigGAN can generate images based on specific conditions or inputs.

3. Video Generation:

   • Video Prediction Models: These models generate future frames in a video sequence based on the input frames, useful in applications like video synthesis and prediction.

4. Music Generation:

   • MIDI Generation: AI models can generate musical pieces in MIDI format, imitating various styles or even composing original compositions.

5. Speech Generation:

   • Text-to-Speech (TTS) Systems: These tools convert written text into spoken words, and some advanced models can generate natural-sounding human-like voices.

6. Code Generation:

   • Code Completion Tools: These tools assist programmers by suggesting code snippets or completing partial code based on the context.

   • AutoML (Automated Machine Learning): AI tools that automate the process of machine learning model selection, hyperparameter tuning, and deployment.

7. Art and Design:

   • Style Transfer Models: These models apply artistic styles from one image to another.

   • Creative Adversarial Networks (CANs): Focus on generating novel and creative content, often used in artistic applications.

8. Data Augmentation:

   • Generative Data Augmentation: AI models that can generate new training examples to augment datasets, enhancing the performance of machine learning models.

9. Interactive Generative Tools:

   • Interactive Storytelling Models: AI tools that generate narratives or stories based on user inputs or predefined scenarios.

10. Robotics and Simulation:

    • Generative Models for Robot Control: Models that can generate control signals for robotic systems in various scenarios.

Here are just a few sources you can check out to get up to date news and insights:

• The Batch
• Vox's Artificial Intelligence
• The Rundown AI
• Medium's Artificial Intelligence