GENERATIVE AI: What is Generative AI?

Artificial Intelligence has been around for a long time, we have been using it for years in the form of autocorrect and predictive text. Recently however, the emergence of a new type, Generative AI, has been changing our relationship with technology at an unprecedented rate. But what is it exactly?  

Generative AI or GenAI is a technology that can mimic human interaction and create content from language prompts. It works by learning common patterns and structures from huge sets of data. This large amount of training data is what makes GenAI different from previous types of AI and allows it to create bigger and more complex outputs. The first AI programs to do this are called Large Language Models (LLM). 

While GenAI technologies are able to mimic speech, these tools do not understand what they are saying and are simply predicting the words that are most likely to come next in a sentence. They are content generators, not knowledge generators. 

AI is constantly evolving, and more task-specific AI tools are being built on top of the original foundation models. Originally, GenAI could only produce text, it can now produce images, videos, quizzes, podcasts and even music.  

In education AI can be used for: 

• Learning: by summarising long texts or videos and explaining concepts 

• Teaching: educators can use AI to help develop resources and give personalised feedback 

• Writing: AI programs can help with structure and grammar 

• Accessibility: by providing text-to-speech and alternative formats 

• Research: by focusing searches and providing keyword suggestions 

In these pages we’ll mainly focus on using AI for library related uses: research and referencing. If you’d like to know more about using AI in academic writing, we recommend you visit the SkillsHub pages.

The fact that you can use AI does not mean that you always should or that you are allowed to use it. Check if there are other tools that are better for the task at hand and, when working on an assignment, check if AI is allowed. 

AI can seem perfect and all-knowing, but in reality, there are concerns related to AI use that students should be aware of: 

• Accuracy: AI can make mistakes, its responses are based on what is most probable, and not necessarily what is correct, and AI cannot tell the difference

• Trustworthiness: if there are gaps in its training or if not able to find information, AI will “hallucinate” and produce very believable lies

• Ethical implications: there are serious implications in the development and use of AI, from environmental issues, to copyright, to biases, to human rights. Go to our Ethics and AI tab to find out more

• Overreliance: certain tasks like writing an essay, summarising a lesson, or searching are part of learning and understanding; if overused, AI can interfere with the learning process