GEA2000 - World Geography - Lannon

Examples of generative AI include ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Google Bard, though more tools are developed seemingly overnight. ChatGPT is the most common generative AI application currently used. 

Generative AI is an advanced technology that creates original written passages, art, music, and other media with the help of a prompt. Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, typically learns from large datasets, analyzes prompts, and predicts the correct course of action. It is not "thinking," nor is it "creating" in the traditional sense. Generative AI does not perform internet or database searches, and is fully reliant on the datasets chosen and fed to it by its maintaining bodies. With some applications, such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, users can continuously chat with the artificial intelligence to refine, expand, or change its generated content. 

AI tools can often help with our research projects, when permitted in your course. ChatGPT specifically can be useful for research, but not in the way you might think. It is important to know the limitations of the AI tool you are using before relying on it for any part of your project. 

For example, ChatGPT has several limitations: 

• It is not a search tool; it generates information rather than collects it. 
• It has only includes data up to September 2021, meaning it might not have the most up-to-date information to generate responses from. 
• It does not understand cause and effect or logical arguments. 
• It can hallucinate. This means that ChatGPT will provide sources and information that may seem correct at first glance, but are, in fact, a mix of accurate information and information it has made up and is completely false.
• It does not have access to subscription-based journals and databases and other information behind a paywall.

While ChatGPT should not be used as a way to find sources or information on a topic, it can be a tool for narrowing or developing a topic, identifying keywords and finding alternate search terms.