Generative AI in Higher Ed

Higher education publications like Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and EdTech Magazine include frequent write-ups on generative AI and its impact on higher ed, while major newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post help provide broader updates on generative AI. 

Additional resources: 

• Matt Wolfe's YouTube channel for weekly updates on all things AI. 
• Bryan Alexander's "Resources for Exploring ChatGPT and Higher Education" helps identify key readings and resources. He continues to add new resources to the list since first publishing it in December 2022.
• Anna Mills curates both "AI Text Generators and Teaching Writing: Starting Points for Inquiry" and "AI Text Generators: Sources to Stimulate Discussion Among Teachers," which include extensive reading lists and link out to relevant resources. 
• Lance Eaton, Director of Digital Pedagogy at College Unbound, compiles "Educational Resources on AI" and "Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools."

Two of the most popular generative AI chatbots currently:

1. OpenAI's ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/ (requires free account; ChatGPT Plus paid subscription also available)
2. Google Bard: https://bard.google.com/ (no account required)

Some of these additional tools are currently only available to test groups:

• Bing Chat (Microsoft)
• Elicit: "Elicit uses language models to help you automate research workflows, like parts of literature review. Elicit can find relevant papers without perfect keyword match, summarize takeaways from the paper specific to your question, and extract key information from the papers."
• GPT-4 (OpenAI)
• Microsoft 365 Copilot (Microsoft): see Microsoft adds AI tools to office apps like Outlook, Word (AP) and You may soon be able to use AI in Microsoft Word, Outlook (WaPo) for overviews
• Perplexity

There are several free and paid tools available that are designed to "catch" generative AI-produced content. GPTZero is one example of an AI content detector frequently used in higher ed. However, results can vary considerably across these tools and results are inconclusive at best.

Some faculty members might want to explore these tools if/when building an academic misconduct case against a suspected student, but results from AI content detectors are not considered definitive "proof" of academic misconduct or plagiarism.

To learn more about specific AI content detectors, try referring to eWeek's Top AI Detectors: Comparison Chart or similar.