The fanfare that generative artificial intelligence brought to us this year has become essentially non-existent, very little people talk about using this technology anymore.
Generative AI learns from content that we’ve produced as well as resources that people have created before us – thesaurus books, dictionaries, conversations. It is simply spitting out the most desirable basic answer that you asked for.
It is understandably so, a plethora of students and workers got caught trying to pass their AI generated content as their own. That’s entirely on them.
But instead of inputting the least productive commands into an engine like ChatGPT, try thinking about how you would like to be given tasks. Only then can you begin to be able to utilise these intelligent chatbots to assist you in your tasks.
Being able to use generative AI to guide you to make your assignments better should be the goal, not having it generate your assignment for you. It’s very easy to find shortcuts when the deadline for your assignment is due six hours from now and you’re still procrastinating.
There is always the possibility of combining all your braincells and powering through the next six hours and actually completing the assignment. But why bother stressing yourself out so much when an assistant is right there on your screen?
Assistant, not shortcut. Generative artificial intelligence will speed up the process of your work, but it won’t find you the shortcut to a completed assignment. You need to learn to use it smartly.
Think about the other generative AI tools that you probably use – a thesaurus tool, generating images or a grading tool. The vaguer the commands, the less accurate the results are going to be.
Simplifying, summarising or paraphrasing texts are various functions that AI tools like ChatGPT allows you to command. Creating essays and listing references are not one of its functions that you should be using.
There are dedicated tools that aren’t ChatGPT that allow you to do certain tasks. These vary from scrounging the internet for relevant, accurate and real research papers that you desperately need to fill the criteria for the number of references for your essay. Or a tool that allows you to grade your essay in a particular way to assist you in getting the highest possible grade from the work that you outputted. It could be as simple as changing a few words to be more academic, or rephrasing a paragraph to add clarity to your assessment.
Trying to dismiss generative artificial intelligence because it didn’t complete your assignment is complete ignorance. We need to begin weaving this technology that has been given to us, for free, to improve and automate the smaller tasks that irritate us while we’re trying to complete an assignment.
