Getting Started with Gen AIAI with Integrity: Guidelines for Responsible Use

Generative AI is a powerful tool that can simplify tasks, spark creativity, and support your learning. As you navigate using Gen AI in your personal, professional, and academic life, it’s essential that you follow precautions to ensure data privacy, copyright, and professional integrity guidelines are followed. These guidelines are in place for good reasons to support your learning goals and professional development.

This guide identifies key pitfalls of Gen AI and will help you use AI ethically, maintain academic integrity, and make the most of its benefits without straying into unethical territory. Let’s dive into using AI safely and responsibly!

Key Pitfalls of Gen AI

Generative AI tools, like chatbots, are powerful but not without challenges. Here are some key pitfalls to watch out for:

Data Privacy and Security

Gen AI chatbots are like sponges—they absorb data from what you type and the internet, including open and copyrighted sources. Be careful with personal info—if it ends up in training data, it could unintentionally surface for other users. Protecting your data is key!

Hallucinations, Copyright, and Bias

Gen AI chatbots can generate text, images, and more, but they’re not perfect—they might include biases, factual errors, or even reproduce copyrighted material. Before trusting the output, ask yourself:

Is the produced output factually correct?
Does the produced image represent other well-known copyrighted or established works of art?
Does the output reflect any biases or harmful stereotypes?
Does the output reflect the perspectives and viewpoints of a certain culture or group?

Collaborating With AI: Using It Effectively and Ethically

Generative AI is a powerful resource that can boost your creativity and problem-solving skills. However, it's important to view it as a co-creation tool rather than a replacement for your critical thinking. Only when we include our uniquely human experiences and ideas do we transform AI's contributions into meaningful, original outcomes.

Here are some ways you may want to use Gen AI:

Explore and Expand Your Ideas: Use Gen AI to brainstorm concepts, create outlines, learn more about new topics and explore different viewpoints.
Stimulate Critical Thinking: Challenge the AI's responses and consider the viewpoint of the data it relies on. Practice posing follow-up questions (or prompts) that investigate: Did the output make sense? Does its response include actual insights or does it sound good, but overall shallow in its response?
Work Together and Learn: Combine AI ideas with your own insights to create unique work.

Consider and Reflect: AI vs. Effort: What Would You Do?

Imagine that you are asked to give a presentation to a panel of experts who will ask you a number of detailed questions afterward. If you perform well, you will win a significant prize. You have been told that the use of Generative AI is acceptable when creating the presentation and preparing for questions.

While you may choose to use Gen AI to help you prepare, what might the consequences be if you relied on Gen AI without putting in your own effort to research the topic and prepare for the panel’s discussions? In this scenario, can you imagine how you might utilize AI appropriately?

Ethical Use of Gen AI in Professional Settings

As we just covered, it is critical that we continue to develop our key skills even as Gen AI enables us to do things more efficiently.

Always refer to the AI policies set by your employer when considering using any Gen AI tool for your work.
When in doubt, ask whether you could or should use a tool for work communication or projects.
Reflect on whether using Gen AI is changing how you learn and think.

Next Step

With that, you have all the basics you need to start working with Gen AI chatbots to empower your curiosity or learning. Let’s complete this introductory Gen AI training by summarizing key ideas that we have covered and share more Gen AI resources for you to explore.