Sustainability

Defining Artificial Intelligence can be a challenging task, as researchers within this field often hold diverse perspectives regarding its criteria and qualifications. At its simplest, AI is:

"The capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour"

(Oxford English Dictionary, 2021).

Some definitions go a step further: according to UNESCO, machines based on AI "are potentially capable of imitating or even exceeding human cognitive capacities, including sensing, language interaction, reasoning and analysis, problem solving, and even creativity." (UNESCO, 2019).

You can read more about the History and Key Concepts of AI in this guide. Here is another useful guide that provides key terms and definitions for AI related concepts. 

Unauthorized use of AI Tools is considered cheating and/or plagiarism according to Zayed University Guidelines and Procedures.

However, different professors may allow limited use of Generative AI tools with proper citation, or accept its use on a case-by-case basis.

Why is it important to cite your sources?

• Citation gives credit to the source creator’s ideas and words and can strengthen your argument or position. 
• Citing the author or source avoids plagiarism. Plagiarism is the act of claiming another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as though they were one’s own work. 

• A citation is like an address for a source; citations tell the reader where you, the writer, found the source.  Reader can visit the original source if needed. 

Considering the points above, researchers should be aware of the following considerations. 
Generative AI Tools may:

• May generate citations for sources that do not exist.
• May be unable to provide discrete, specific sources or source citations for the information it shares in a response to a query because its responses come from across a vast corpus.  
• Is only as good as the information it draws from, which in the case of the free version of ChatGPT is currently up to date as far as 2021.  It also may contain contradictory, biased, or false information.

Example: When asking ChatGPT to provide an annotated bibliography on the topic of residential care options for adults with autism, it provided a list with four citations and well-worded annotations.  Although they all included real journal titles with corresponding volumes and issues, none of the article titles, authors or pagination matched any of the journals they were listed within.  These were fabricated citations.

Example: When asking ChatGPT to provide an outline for the topic described above (which it did) and also to share the source of the information, it gave the response below.  It is sometimes unable to explain where information came from or refer to discrete sources:
"As for my source of information, I am an AI language model, and I generate my responses based on a vast amount of knowledge that I have been trained on."

What constitutes academic dishonesty?

• Students are expected to do their own work, citing all of the sources and generative AL resources they use
• Impersonating another student in an assessment, or using another student or AI to impersonate you
• Using generative AI tools in ways others than as prescribed in the official course syllabus in the Electronic Syllabus System
• Collaborating with others and/or using AI on assessments meant to be done on one's own, without the prior permission of the instructor
• Withholding or hiding shared instructional, research or AI resources

To avoid committing an act of academic dishonesty, students are expected to do their own work, citing all of the sources and acknowledging all of the tools they use. 

What is plagiarism?

• Using the existing work of other people or generative AI tools requires acknowledgement, usually in the form of citations and references, otherwise it is considered plagiarism. 
• Copying work produced by a person or generative AI tools
• Using the words, images, source code, ideas or any work created by someone else or generative AI tools without acknowledgement.
• Every source and tools used in a paper must be identified in the list of references.