Frequently Asked Questions About AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) falls into three general categories: Reactive, Predictive, or Generative. 

• AI could refer to mobile phone FaceID or voice assistants (reactive);
• AI can create preferred music or video lists (predictive); or
• AI can create new content (generative) such as ChatGPT and other LLMs.

AI literacy enables students and parents to navigate the AI-driven landscape with confidence and understanding.

Central to AI literacy is:

• Recognizing AI’s power while understanding its bias and potential for mistakes;
• Identifying privacy risks and addressing ethical considerations;
• Building skills including how to interact with AI through prompts;
• Thinking critically, using guiding questions, checking AI responses
• Adopting academic honesty and accountability techniques.

• Parents can share their knowledge of AI;
• Explore AI resources together;
• Foster curiosity in their child; and
• Encourage critical thinking when choosing AI tools.

• Safety in use, risk of bias, equity, and inclusiveness in the use of AI must be considered; and
• AI accuracy, authenticity, and copyright considerations are also key when using AI.

• Clear and effective prompt writing is crucial for obtaining accurate and useful results from AI; and
• Follow-up prompts can improve accuracy to help AI tools understand the user’s needs.

• Academic honesty and accountability procedures should be adopted; and
• Critical thinking and ethical considerations when adopting and using AI tools are also key.

• Educators need to strive for responsible, inclusive, and respectful integration of AI;
• A team should be designated to:
  • Create or adapt AI guidelines,
  • Educate teachers about the impact and responsible use of GenAI, and
  • Develop resources for students to identify and manage biases and inaccuracies in AI.

1. Have a clear policy on when and how AI tools can be used;
2. Teach students about the ethical use of AI tools and their integrity;
3. Design assignments requirng critical thinking and creativity;
4. Implement process-oriented assessments (e.g. drafts, outlines, presentations) where students ‘show their work’; and
5. Incorporate in-class, live activities and presentations.

After Sarah Eaton, uCalgary, 2024

Currently, no tools can reliably detect AI-generated text. AI detection tools like TurnItIn often flag ESL students incorrectly as cheaters (Liang et al, 2023) and can produce both false positives and negatives. Using these services also means giving student work to third parties who may use it however they choose. Additionally, AI tools like Claude cannot reliably confirm whether they authored a specific text.

See: Anderson et al. (2023); Elkhatat et al. (2023); Foltýnek et al. (2023); Gegg-Harrison & Quarterman (2024); Liu et al. (2023); Sadasivan et al. (2023); Waltzer et al. (2023); Weber (2023); Weber-Wulff et al. (2023); and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-18/do-ai-detectors-work-students-face-false-cheating-accusations https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/when-ai-cheat-detection-goes-wrong-6200812/ 

• AI tools like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, and others were used to improve the text on this section of the website.
• The AI tools were used to take the initial ideas and text to turn them into draft sentences. For example, tools were frequently prompted to “revise and update this”.
• If the AI’s sentences were good, they were adjusted to fit the rest of the text.
• The AI also suggested spelling and grammar changes.
• Humans carefully checked every sentence to make sure it was accurate and had the right tone before including it.
• AI was also used to create some images displayed in this section.
• Most importantly, humans were in charge of the whole process, making sure creativity and teamwork weren’t limited.