ULibraries Research Guides: Librarian Visits: Quest 1130: Ai in Research and Writing

AI Concerns

A few concerns to keep in mind about AI include:

Lacks recent and previous knowledge on a topic
Servers electricity and water usage is extremely high
Plagiarism

Using AI Responsibly

It is important to use AI responsibly. Typical applications for students include:

Understanding your topic
Identifying research avenues
Identifying search terms
Summarizing articles
Citation help

AI Tools & Use

Don't get intimated by AI. In reality, you need to talk to it as if it doesn't know what you're talking about. Asking simple direct questions is a good way to be sure you don't waste time using it.

Types of AI

Two types of AI are listed here along with a brief description.

Project Toni - Serves more as a research and writing coach.

ChatGPT - Known to hallucinate research and provides a generic example of a research paper.

Using AI

When working on a research assignment, you'll need to go through a few phases before completion. Using AI can help expedite the process. Here are a few prompts to work with:

Understanding your topic - Ask, Tell me about ... (your topic)
Selecting a perspective - Read over AI's response and decide which direction you want to take your research
Identifying search terms - Ask, Give me some search terms on... (your topic)
Identifying research avenues - Ask, What are good library databases to find information on ... (your topic)
Finding articles - Go to the databases AI suggested and collect material using the search terms AI generated
Summarizing articles - You can enter the article in AI and ask it to summarize the article
Read the articles - Read the articles to gather details you want to include in your research assignment
Citation help - You can ask AI to give you a citation

AI and the Library

There are a few databases listed here that have AI built in to their search options.

Scite
Scite is a platform for discovering and evaluating scientific articles via Smart Citations. Smart Citations allow users to see how a publication has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim. Includes an AI Research Assistant.
ProQuest Databases
This listing provides access to most of the databases that the University of Utah subscribes to through ProQuest. Many are also listed elsewhere on our list of databases, but this serves as a common access point to all of them. The number of databases listed here may change as the University adds or removes ProQuest content from our collections. For more information about the databases that ProQuest provides access to, open this list and then click on the \Searching <#> Databases\" button near"…

This listing provides access to most of the databases that the University of Utah subscribes to through ProQuest. Many are also listed elsewhere on our list of databases, but this serves as a common access point to all of them. The number of databases listed here may change as the University adds or removes ProQuest content from our collections. For more information about the databases that ProQuest provides access to, open this list and then click on the \Searching <#> Databases\" button near the top left of the screen."