My AI Use
I would say I abstained from using AI during my first two years of this doctoral program for fear that it was considered "cheating." I didn't want any part of my work to be considered plagiarized or come into question as to whether it was my own work or not.
Dr. Baek encouraged me to use AI "like a personal research assistant." It wasn't until I took the seminar from Josh Cavalier that I fully understood what that meant. My number one takeaway from that conference was that AI will not replace human thinking (at least not today), and that it still needs my expertise to confirm the output is correct. Essentially, as Josh says, humans partnering or collaborating with AI creates a multiplication of the human's expertise. Attending this conference assuaged any fears I had about using AI, and I dove into learning how to multiply my expertise through the use of (and collaboration with) AI.
That said, all writing is my own. While I have collaborated with AI (which I will elaborate on below), I have continued to write my own text on all assignments. Nothing is copied and pasted from AI.
My collaboration with AI entails:
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Exploration of multiple documents at once
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Synthesis of themes across disparate articles
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Using AI as an intellectual sounding board for thematic analysis and organizing thoughts
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Finding content within my own writing and scholarly assignments to pull together for use in my literature review and prospectus
I have frequently said, AI is not going to take our jobs, but people who know how to use AI might. Therefore, I feel it's essential to fully understand how to utilize this emerging tool and take advantage of it as a research asset rather than being afraid of it. I'm embracing the future and being transparent with how I'm using it in my research. It's a research partner that's multiplying my expertise, and not doing the actual work for me. I also, of course, used spell check and Grammarly to support my writing, as anyone would.
If you have specific questions, please feel free to reach out.