Generative AI and Academic Integrity

Professor Ann Rogerson speaks to the role of academic integrity in interactions with generative artificial intelligence.

"One of the critical things to understand with generative AI is it needs to be critiqued. It needs to be fact-checked and this is where academic integrity comes in..."
- Professor Ann Rogerson

Text transcript

Hi, I'm Professor Ann Rogerson from the University of Wollongong, and I'm here today to talk to you about artificial intelligence, AI, as well as academic integrity, which is also AI. These can be very confusing concepts, but there is a relationship between them and also some strengths and pitfalls. Generative AI is what it says on the box. It's generative. It's a predictive tool drawing on existing information that has been drawn from the internet. So it's not creating new knowledge, it's generating answers to questions that people ask. Academic integrity, on the other hand, is the acknowledgement of words, sources, creative materials, and it's ensuring that the person who generated the idea is actually acknowledged. So it begs a question, if I use a generative AI tool, should I acknowledge it? The answer is yes, you should. And also quantify how much of the generative tool's information you have actually used because it's not yours.

The better way to go about it is to write and create your own work. Artificial intelligence can add some benefits for your work in terms of checking things. However, it's not an original piece of work, it's not an original idea as it's generative.

What are some of the risks that happen with using generative AI tools? As generative AI actually uses information that exists, it's only responding to the question that you ask to the extent of the knowledge base that it actually has. This means if it doesn't know the answer, it makes it up. This means it can generate references that don't exist. It can generate responses that don't are not true. The problem with this is if we don't use a critical lens and actually examine what's real and what's not, it means we can distort knowledge and the distorted knowledge is fed back into the artificial intelligence tools.

So one of the critical things to understand with generative AI is it needs to be critiqued. It needs to be fact checked, and this is where academic integrity comes in. We're after integrity of thought and word and action. Critical thinking skills are not going to go away with generative AI. Someone needs to be a check and balance in the system to ensure what is generated is actually true. We know that generative AI at this point in time is good on some aspects, but is still learning in others. The importance is that it learns from what is right rather than what is wrong.

Generative AI actually issues us with some challenges and also opportunities. It's important that we embrace it in both our education and workplaces to benefit society, but as part of that, we also need to be careful. Where data is stored is a big question. Who's going to access the information you upload into a generative AI tool to assess? So, for example, a number of people are building AI tools based off the OpenAI software and also its creative counterparts. But as they're building these tools, they're also capturing data. So this is where we need to be careful from an academic and personal integrity point of view, and also an ethical and privacy standpoint. If you are not clear where the information is going, you should be guarded in what you actually upload for assessment. Because once it's uploading to the system, it's difficult to retrieve and know how that information will be used in the future.

It is really important that you understand from a disciplinary standpoint how your particular industry association or discipline is using artificial intelligence, both in education, research, and the workplace. This will give you a guide to the sorts of skills that will be useful into the future and also future proof you from a career standpoint. By understanding how artificial intelligence works and generative AI tools impact workplace actions, you'll be better prepared for a future.

Generative AI presents some exciting opportunities moving forward. As long as we remain aware of the challenges, the difficulties, and the background to the generative AI tools, we can make better integrity and ethical decisions on its use and how we apply it in everyday life.