Benefits and Limitations

Benefits

• Brainstorming: Given a topic and context, AI can suggest novel approaches. Here’s an example brainstorming approach that includes a worksheet.
• Identifying trends and relationships: AI can identify connections between ideas or disciplines, which can help point researchers toward new avenues of exploration.
• Summaries and simplification: AI can summarize or simplify topics that may be too broad or complex to easily understand. Here is ChatGPT explaining Non-Fungible Tokens to a 10-year-old.

Limitations

• Hallucinations: AI can just make up false information and present it as truth. This includes fake sources when asked to create a reference list.
• Misinterpretation: AI can misstate, distort, or inaccurately summarize information.
• Incomplete information: AI can leave out important information.
• Human Bias: Because AI systems are trained on historical data and use algorithms created by human programmers, they recreate and perpetuate human biases that exist in society. Artificial intelligence responses can contain racial and gender stereotypes and other various biases (e.g. disability, age, sexual orientation etc.) in both image and language-based models. 
• User Data Protection: Information about what user data is collected and how data will be used, clear term agreements, the right to have companies delete user personal data, and robust protection from data breaches are all critical for protecting user privacy (Koerner, 2023).
  Intellectual Property Theft: Generative AI tools can inadvertently use copyrighted or proprietary material, leading to potential legal issues.
  Malicious Use: Generative AI output can be used for malicious activities such as creating deepfakes and spreading potentially harmful misinformation.