AI and Chat GPT

What is ChatGPT good for and not good for?

Remember, you'll always need to verify the information, because ChatGPT will sometimes make things up (known as "hallucination.").

What is it good for?

• Brainstorming ideas
• Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper, and keywords for searching in library databases.
• Explaining information in ways that are easy to understand
• Summarizing and outlining
  • Note: You may want to try one of these sites that summarize web search results with generative AI. (But don't use ChatGPT, since it's not connected to web search). Keep in mind the sources cited may not be scholarly.
    • Perplexity AI
    • Microsoft Copilot 
    • Gemini
• Asking questions (be sure to fact check the results) You can ask a million questions without fear of being judged.
• Translating text to different languages (not completely fluent in every language)
• Helping write or debug computing code

What is it not so good for?

• Library research! For now, it's best to use the Clark Memorial Library Discovery Service, individual library databases, or Google Scholar. 
• Asking for any information that would have dire consequences if it was incorrect (such as health, financial, legal advice, and so on). This is because of its tendency to make up answers sometimes, but still sound very confident.

Prompting

Prompting is what you type into the chat box.

The way you prompt makes a huge difference in the output that ChatGPT gives you. So it's worth learning some tips.

Always verify the information it gives you.
Think of ChatGPT as your personal intern. They need very specific instructions, and they need you to verify the information.

ChatGPT sometimes makes things up. That's because it's designed to write in a way that sounds like human writing. It's not designed to know facts.

Tips for writing effective prompts

1. Give it some context or a role to play.
2. Give it very detailed instructions, including how you would like the results formatted.
3. Keep conversing and asking for changes. Ask it to revise the answer in various ways.

Examples

1. A role could be, "Act as an expert in [fill in the blank]." 
   Act as an expert community organizer.
   Act as a high school biology teacher.
   Act as a comedian.
    
2. Example prompt:
   Act as an expert academic librarian. I’m writing a research paper for Sociology and I need help coming up with a topic. I’m interested in topics related to climate change. Please give me a list of 10 topic ideas related to climate change.
    
3. Example of changes: (keep conversing until you get something useful)
   Now give me some sub-topics or research questions for [one of those topics]. And give me a list of keywords and phrases I can use to search for that topic in library databases and Google Scholar.
    

   Or...

   I didn't like any of those topics. Please give me 10 more.

This page adapted from University of Arizona Libraries, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.