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Artificial Intelligence

This guide is created for the UMGC community, with resources and information about Artificial Intelligence that can help students, faculty, and the greater community.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the use of programs, machines, and systems that simulate human intelligence. While AI has many applications, it is most commonly used to describe any type of technology (including voice recognition, robotics, and intelligent agents) to mimic human learning, problem solving, and logic (Whitson, 2023).

Artificial intelligence is used across all industries and academic subjects. The term is used to describe a variety of functions, such as finding the best route on Apple and Google Maps, self-driving cars, algorithms to display a list in a certain order on a website or in a social media app, and facial recognition software to unlock a smart phone. It is part of our everyday lives, at work, in school and at home.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. AI tools, such as ChatGPT, can create content in response to prompts that you type in. ChatGPT can, for example, write a draft of an assignment for you, create works of visual art, write computer code, and much more. Because AI is so new and so powerful, universities like UMGC are developing polices and guidelines having to do with AI and how students might be able to use it ethically and safely. 

How to Use this Guide

This guide has been created for students and instructors to explore how to responsibly and ethically use AI in their work. There is information about how to critically engage with AI tools, examples and further reading on how students and instructors can use AI tools in their work, as well as information about AI literacy, citing AI, and current AI news, such as ChatGPT and other tools.

As Eaton and Anselmo (2023) described, “If we think of artificial intelligence apps as another tool that students can use to ethically demonstrate their knowledge and learning, then we can emphasize learning as a process not a product.”

Please note that all links in this guide open in new windows.

Background Information

These links are to resources that include background information, such as information about the companies that own popular AI tools, definitions of terms that are often spoken about alongside AI, and basic information on how to use generalized AI tools. 

Attributions

This guide was created by Julie Harding and Robert Miller, UMGC Library. 

Parts of this guide are adapted (with changes) or reused from a guide created by Bronte Chiang at the University of Calgary. The University of Calgary guide is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

References on this page:

Eaton, (S.), & Anselmo, L. (2023). Teaching and learning with artificial intelligence apps. Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning

Whitson, G. M. . I. B. M., PhD. (2023). Artificial intelligence. Salem Press Encyclopedia of Science.