Student course representative, Eddie MacDonagh, shares advice on how you can use Generative AI tools to your fullest potential without sacrificing quality or integrity...
Thinking beyond the algorithm
Especially in professional settings, knowing how to use Generative AI effectively is becoming a vital skill. Beyond that, AI can be incredibly helpful for speeding up your work (especially if it isn’t being officially assessed with AI banned).
I have written here some areas of concern when using Generative AI and am going to round it out with a list of tips and tricks to make sure your work is the best, and fastest, it can be.
Know that AI gets things wrong
Generative AI tools have incredible power and can create human-like writing about any subject in the world. However, it does not actually know anything at all. AI is also very poor at emotional intelligence, context, and empathy. All of these are things that humans are very good at. You can use AI as a creative aid – to produce drafts and to help you refine your wording – but you must check both the work and the facts yourself.
Be original! Use AI to help, not to create for you
Using Generative AI is a great way to save time, but it does come with the risk of sounding too generic – and too much like AI. This is simple to work around, by going back through at the end and smoothing out the emotionlessness and the mistakes. This can be done as a review of generated content, or a whole rewrite – but that usually depends on the circumstances.
Use AI ethically
Generative AI tools do have some ethical concerns – with AI prone to make things up and misuse copyrighted material. Once again, all facts should be checked and the wording proofed to make sure that there aren’t any issues. The final thing to do is to make sure you communicate what you have been generating. For assignments, this should be displayed to you clearly, but otherwise a simple statement will do.
AI offers efficiency at the sake of quality
If you want speed, it is hard to deny quite how fast effective use of Generative AI can make you. However, this speed does have its drawbacks. As I’ve mentioned already, AI can be wrong. AI also tends to speak in the same tone no matter what. If you need a different voice, or to be your own words, then keeping AI in the drafting phase and writing a final version yourself can really help.
Remember that you are on the Internet
Generative AI can do a lot with the information it is given, but so can the companies that run these services. Keep your personal information personal, and do not provide any copyrighted or otherwise restricted material to these tools. Make sure you are as safe with Generative AI as you should always be online.
My favourite way to work with AI is to write a rough draft myself and then review it with AI to fix a lot of the mistakes in my wording. Finally, I like to go back through after that and make it sound more like me – and to fix any logical mistakes the AI made. However, I also quite like the approach of generating a first draft to get ideas of what to say and then writing it manually using the generated draft as prompts to pick and choose the correct points to talk about. For the sake of transparency, I used method 2 here (and the title was inspired by ChatGPT aswell).
Ultimately, Generative AI is a powerful tool – but it is just a tool. It’s value depends on how you use it and by approaching anything it generates critically you can make sure you get the best from it whilst catching these errors – preserving originality, authenticity, and ethics in the process. When dealing with Generative AI, just make sure to:
- Properly check any facts the tool generates.
- Check the wording of any generated material to make sure it is saying the right thing.
- Change things to make the output sound more like you.
- Use AI for drafting and, if your wording really matters, write the final version yourself.
- Avoid giving the tool any copyrighted or personal information.
With these tips in your back pocket, you will be able to use Generative AI tools to your fullest potential without sacrificing quality or integrity.
For more advice on using Generative AI, I would recommend checking out the .
By Eddie MacDonagh