Generative AI: A Student's Guide

GenAI: What Is It Good For and Not Good For?

Remember, you'll always need to verify the information, because generative AI (genAI) will sometimes make things ups (known as "hallucination.")

What is it good for?

• Brainstorming ideas for research topics (when the brainstorming on your own is not a part of your graded work)
• Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper (when narrowing on your own is not a part of your graded work)
• Explaining information at a level that is understandable to you so that you can then move on to do your own work (when that use of genAI is not a part of your graded work): You must fact check that information however, so we recommend working with a tutor when you are having trouble with content in your courses.
• Summarizing and outlining (when summarizing and outlining is not a part of your graded work)
• Translating text to different languages (not completely fluent - don't rely on it: Your world language instructor is extremely fluent so keep that in mind)
• Helping debug or write computing code (when writing code on your own is not a part of your graded work)

What is it not so good for?

• Asking for any information that would have significantly poor consequences if it was incorrect (such as health, financial, and legal advice for example). This is because of genAI's tendency to make up answers (hallucinate): remember these tools are predicting the order of words relevant to your prompt and its training. Even if a genAI chat bot is trained on nothing but accurate information, it can re-mix that information to be inaccurate. Also remember that a generative AI tool that is trained on 2024 data will not have 2025 information.
• Math: While some genAI tools are getting better at math, it also may direct you to solve a problem in an inaccurate way, or in a way that is counter to the instruction in your math or science course. We recommend attending your instructor's office hours and seeing a tutor if you are having trouble with any course content.
• Library research: GenAI tools remain prone to hallucinating sources of information - we recommend saving yourself the academic embarrassment and the possibility of an academic integrity violation. Work with one of your TCC Library faculty instead; research is about much more than finding sources.
  • In addition, genAI outputs are not sources of information as it applies to research because they are not citable and not retrievable. See the Academic Integrity and Citation tab for additional instruction about that.
• Maintaining your own critical and creative thinking skills: When we offload our brain work to others or to machines too often, our brain work skills (cognition) weaken over time.

Understanding Prompting

What is Prompting?

• Simply, prompts are your inputs, whatever you type or upload into a generative AI chat bot tool.
• The way you prompt makes a difference in the quality of output that a genAI tool gives you, so it's worth learning some tips.

Tips for Writing Effective Prompts

1. First, plan ahead. Make some notes on what exactly it is that you want to achieve before jumping into the chat.
2. Reflect on whether your use of the genAI tool is ethical and meets academic integrity policies and your instructor's policies, expectations and directions. See the GenAI Use Checklist on this page.
3. Give the genAI tool some context or a role to play: "Please act as a tutor on the topic of somatic cell division: Rather than giving me answers coach me on how to arrive at my own answers, and then provide feedback on my accuracy."
4. Give the chat bot very detailed instructions, including how you would like the output to be presented to you. Do you want an outline? A summary? A letter? A conversation? 
5. Request changes. Even if you are detailed in your prompts, there may be some missing information, or from the output you may realize that you have gaps in your own knowledge.  Re-prompt the chat bot to revise its output in specific ways until it meets your needs.
6. Be polite? Some users claim that they get more effective outputs from the genAI tool when they are polite, some say it makes no difference and just adds clutter to a prompt. Try being neutral in a prompt, and then start a new chat using the same prompt with polite cues (please and thank you) and see if you observe any differences! Keep in mind that even the developers of genAI report unpredictable behavior that they can't explain; it's possible that through its training, a chat bot learns the patterns for respectful conversation.

Examples

1. Example role:
   Act as an expert community organizer.
   Act as a college 100-level biology teacher (a BIOL110 instructor is a 100-level instructor; a BIOL242 instructor is a 200-level instructor, and so on!)
   Act as a tutor.
2. Example prompt:
   Please act as an expert community organizer. I am organizing a peaceful protest outside of City Hall in three weeks about ______. Please give me a through plan for legally and effectively planning and facilitating this protest.
3. Example changes: (keep refining your inputs until you get useful outputs)
   Please elaborate on what you mean by "identifying stakeholders", why that's important for organizing a peaceful protest, and how to communicate with the stakeholders.
4. Stay in the same chat if it is going well and you are getting useful outputs. If the chat is producing poor outputs or you want to move on to a different topic, build a new strategy and start a new chat. Did you know? A TCC Library faculty and the staff in the Information Commons can also help you with developing your AI prompting skills!

Always Verify The Information GenAI Gives You

• GenAI not only needs very specific instructions from you, you are also responsible for verifying the information in their outputs.

GenAI Has a Reputation of Making Things Up

• That's because genAI tools are developed to produce outputs that mimic human language or creativity - they are not developed to know and gather and verify facts. GenAI tools predict the order of words in natural human language based on its training and on your prompts. Also know that you may be able to inject the chat bot with your own inaccurate knowledge and biases that could produce inaccurate or biased outputs.

Why is effective and efficient prompting important?

• Simply, you are more likely to get outputs that are useful to you! Also if your prompts are effective and efficient, you may increase the accuracy of the outputs.
• Keep in mind that generative AI tools are power and water glutton monsters, so if you can limit your prompts you are also limiting the power and water consumption of these tools.

The Technology Behind ChatGPT

It's important for both students and faculty to understand generative AI enough to be able to understand what it's good for, what it's not good for, and how to use if effectively. Here is a self-paced online course to learn about the basics of OpenAI's ChatGPT, though you can apply most of what you learn here to how other generative AI tools work.

Using ChatGPT Effectively