AI Guide

Good Advice from The Library

1. Use AI wisely – Think about what you're signalling

• You can use AI for many things related to your assignment, and most of it is allowed, as long as you declare it.
  BUT using AI for everything doesn't necessarily mean that your assignment will be a good one.
• Think about what you are signalling by using AI for everything in your assignment. Your teacher/supervisor and external examiner must assess you by your work, and if you have had AI write your entire assignment, you may appear lazy, or less than competent?
• AI cannot be considered an authoritative source. Therefore, quote, refer, or paraphrase only from an AI if it is required for the assignment (e.g., because you are examining the AI itself).

2. Verify AI - it can be wrong

• Verify the AI's responses. Is it factually true, or is it superficial nonsense? If you don't know much about the topic you're going to write about, you may have trouble checking the AI's claims, and in that case you should start somewhere else, e.g. by reading up on the topic in the academic literature.
• Check out the sources that the AI gives you. Do they even exist? And are they actually saying what the AI interprets based on them?
• AI technologies can hallucinate. An AI creates an answer for you from all the data it has at its disposal, based on statistics and probability, but that does not equate to facts. When an AI creates false information, it is said to be 'hallucinating'.

- If you ask an AI for relevant literature for your assignment, it may suggest literature that does not exist. All-round generative AIs are known to hallucinate literature that sounds absolutely perfect for those who need it. The literature just doesn't exist.
- If you use an AI tool that is not newly updated, the AI will not know about recent historical events. So it does not know what has happened in the world since its 'knowledge cut-off date' - i.e. the time it last pulled data. ChatGPT's free version runs on the version called GPT-3.5. It has not been updated since 2021.
- Some AIs put sources on the answers. This is generally good for transparency, but if you fact-check the sources, you cannot always find the answer that the AI has given you in the sources. The AI can thus overinterpret the texts it responds from.

3. Declare when using AI

• If you use generative AI in connection with a written assignment or exam at university, you must declare what you are using AI for.
  Declaring means that you must provide the following information:
  • that you have used it
  • which AI you have used
  • how you have used it
  • where you have used it
  • why you have used it
• The declaration can be placed in different places in your assignment (method section, footnotes, appendices) depending on what makes the most sense.
• For some courses, you will have to tick off AI on a given front page, but most often it will fit most naturally in your methods section, as your use of AI is probably part of your method for the assignment.
• You may need to include supporting documents. Talk to your supervisor or teacher about this.

Example of a declaration

Not used AI technologies?
If you haven't used AI for your assignment, even though it's allowed, it might be a good idea to write:

Read more about Guidance on MitSDU at the bottom of "Marking AI in my assignments".

4. Refer to AI only if you quote, cite, refer to, or paraphrase an AI

You should not include the AI in your reference list if you have not quoted, cited, referred to, or paraphrased the AI.
In that case, you must declare your use of the AI instead, e.g. in your methods section. See the section above "Declare when using AI".

AI cannot be considered an authoritative source, and others cannot go back and read the answers you have received. So, AI is a bad source!

If you need to quote, cite, refer to, or paraphrase any knowledge or fact, you should refer to an authoritative source. So find a genuine source - that is, a source which has a sender and which can be trusted.

If you still need to quote, cite, refer to, or paraphrase an AI, you must include it in your bibliography, where you follow the rules for the chosen referencing style.

You must include information about the following:

• Sender
• Year, if possible - otherwise date of use
• Name of the model
• The version number of the model
• Reply to "... ..."
• A short description in square brackets.
• Link to the model (preferably direct link to prompt with answers).

Example of a reference to AI (in APA 7th)

5. Comply with the rules

• You must comply with SDU's rules for the use of generative AI.
• You must also comply with The Danish Copyright Act. This means that you may not upload or prompt content that is not your own material. For example, you are infringing copyright if you upload a research article that you do not have the rights to - this includes articles that you have downloaded from the library.
• You must not plagiarize from an AI.

6. Contact your supervisor / professor if you're in doubt.