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Artificial Intelligence Academic Council

Informative

Why AI

What is GenAI?

The big question: What is GenAI?

GenAI stands for Generative AI. Before jumping into a definition, why not ask the experts themselves?

 

ChatGPT

 ChatGPT's GenAI Explaination states this,"Okay! Imagine you have a really smart robot friend who can tell stories, draw pictures, or answer questions. This robot learns from a lot of books, pictures, and other fun stuff to understand how to create new things. That’s what GenAI is! It’s like a super helper that uses what it knows to help you with ideas or make cool stuff."

Gemini
Gemini's answer to what GenAI is, stating, "Imagine you have a really smart friend who loves to draw. This friend has seen lots of pictures and knows how to make new ones that look almost exactly like the ones they've seen. That's kind of like Generative AI. Its a computer that can make new things, like pictures, music, or even stories, based on what its learned from all the things its seen before. Its like having a really creative friend who can make anything you ask for!"

The Council's Take on GenAI

Generative AI, or GenAI, is a computer-based system designed for a unique purpose of supporting human creativity. By using its previously learned knowledge, it can generate new ideas based on what we ask of GenAI and its capacities. Its a fascinating concept, and its ability to piece together old information to create "new" information, such as image generation, makes AI a powerful tool for us to harness.

 

Here's how the chair, Dr. Rolando Garza, puts it:

"GenAI is the evolution of change in our lives. Its been alive for years in the imagination of movies and stories, but now we're in a time where its a reality."

"Its going to improve our minds."

Why is it Useful?

 GenAI has many beneficial uses, such as:

  • Promote Creativity
    • GenAI promotes creativity by acting as your creative partner. It can generate ideas, suggest improvements, and create original content like files, images, videos and even music.
  • Support Workflow
    •  GenAI supports workflow by negating the tedious, repetitive tasks and supporting the time consuming obstacles. AI can manage events, schedule meetings, complete repetitive tasks, and analyze progress in order to improve your overall productivity.
  • Learn Difficult Tasks 
    •  GenAI helps learn difficult tasks by breaking down problems into multi-step subjects, providing personalized suggestions and feedback based on each unique user. It can offer tutorials, answer questions in real time, and adapt to each person's own learning speed.
  • Allow Educational Growth
    •  GenAI allows educational growth by providing tailored learning experiences and resources. Platforms can use AI to ascertain a students strengths and weaknesses and provide this information to the educator, allowing for them to visualize what topics need work.

 

How to Use GenAI

Using AI is a lot easier than it may look. Before getting into the specifics of teaching and learning with AI, here's the basics you should know:

  1. Security
    • Never share personal or sensitive information about yourself or others with AI. Protecting your personal security online should always be a priority. Large databases can be vulnerable to breaches, and if your information is exposed, it could be misused. Always take steps to safeguard your privacy while online!
  2. Prompting
    • Its all about the prompts! AI performs well with straightforward questions like, "What’s the difference between ducks and geese?" However, to get the most out of your queries, provide a detailed prompt that clearly outlines your needs. Lets break this down a little farther by giving a list of what an initial prompt should look like. Of course, this isn't always necessary, but its a good tip to know!
      • Tell the AI to impersonate an occupation, position, or similar role to what best matches your request.
      • Ask the AI to do your task. Be descriptive! The more details you add, the more accurate the AI can be.
      • Optionally, set a temperature. In AI, temperature is the measurement between predictability and creativity. A temperature ranges from 0.1 to 1.0, with 0.1 being the most factual and 1.0 being the most creative. Set a low temperature for fact-based responses, technical questions, and direct answers. Set a high temperature for creative, brainstorming, and conversations. 
        Note: Normally AI, such as ChatGPT, will understand what type of temperature you want when you type a prompt. It isn't a requirement to set a temperature, but in some cases, this may help you get the result you need!
      • Provide any extra details, and you're set! Hit send, relax, and let AI do the heavy-lifting. Remember, its here to help!
  3. Adjust
    • Sometimes, AI can mess up and not provide top notch results. But that's okay, because it can always try again! If something doesn't come out as intended, communicate this to the AI and request it to fix or change these parts.
  4. Review
    • AI is known to be a dreamer from time to time, which is why its important to review the output for any hallucinations. A hallucination is when an AI generates information that may appear plausible, but its actually incorrect and misleading. Ensure that you check the AI's results.