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Artificial Intelligence

Definitions

What is artificial intelligence?

  • IBM describes artificial intelligence as a "technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy" (Stryker & Kavlakoglu, 2024, para 1) 

What is generative AI?

  • MIT News describes generative AI as "a machine-learning model that is trained to create new data, rather than making a prediction about a specific dataset" (Zewe, November 9, 2023, para. 4).

What are chatbots?

  • What they used to be:
    • Chatbots are not a new technology, as they have been utilized for years within the business sector to provide 24/7 on-demand services for customers through providing answers to common customer questions (Shweta & Watts, August 21, 2022). In the past, chatbots have lacked attention to detail, and speaking from this guide author's human experience, have often frustrated customers through misunderstanding and lack of human understanding. 
  • What they have become:
    • More recently, the technology of chatbots has developed to integrate "artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language understanding, [and] natural language processing... to provide human-like responses to queries" (Shewta & Watts, August 21, 2022, para. 8). ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Microsoft Co-Pilot are all examples of chatbots which utilize these technologies to provide a human conversation experience (IBM, 2024). 

What is an LLM?

  • "Large language models (LLMs) are a category of foundation models trained on immense amounts of data making them capable of understanding and generating natural language and other types of content to perform a wide range of tasks" (IBM, November 2, 2023, para.1) The data and training processes for these LLMs are proprietary, and therefore we do not know exactly what each AI chatbot is utilizing to answer a question, although many have speculated that sources such as Wikipedia have been utilized within these large datasets (Nielo, April 30, 2023). The AI chatbot appears to be answering questions like a human, because it was trained on human created data, and is predicting the best answer for the question posed, i.e. answering with the information that the chatbot anticipates the user wants to receive. 

What is machine learning?

  • Machine learning is defined as "a subfield of artificial intelligence that gives computers the ability to learn without explicitly being programmed" (Brown, 2021, para 2). 

What does GPT stand for?

  • GPT (of ChatGPT), stands for "Generative Pretrained Transformer" (Nield, April 30, 2023, para. 5). As was described by Belcic and Stryker in 2024, "Generative retraining... teaches the model to detect patterns in unlabeled data, then apply those patterns to new inputs" (para. 18). This training process can be supervised or unsupervised which can bring about concerns surrounding bias, censorship, and other ethical considerations.

What is an AI hallucination?

  • "When an algorithmic system generates information that seems plausible but is actually inaccurate or misleading, computers scientists call it an AI hallucination" (Choi and Mei, March 21, 2025, para. 3). In the context of finding sources, there have been cases where AI chatbots have provided users with citations to articles, books, or legal cases that do not exist, leading to misinformation and taking away from your own argument (Choi and Mei, March 21, 2025). Always stop, think, and evaluate your sources, no matter where they are coming from! Note: For more information on evaluating sources, please see the Evaluating Sources: AI tab of this LibGuide!

Chatbots

AI chatbots took the world by storm in November of 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT to the market (Marr, 2023). Since then, there have been countless chatbots released to the greater public, some freely accessible, some only limitedly accessible within free versions, and some built directly into trusted scientific databases. Below is a running list of chatbots that are currently on the market and available for use.

Please note, that although it is the Milne Library's intention to keep this list up to date, with how quickly this technology is evolving, this list may not be exhaustive. 

Chatbots:

  • ChatGPT (available to use without making an account)
  • Gemini (must make an account to use)
  • Perplexity (available to use without making an account)
  • Microsoft Co-Pilot (must make an account to use)
  • Pi (must make an account to use)
  • Claude (must make an account to use)

Research assistants:

Disclaimer: Ethical Considerations

There are significant ethical considerations when discussing AI. For a list of possible further research topics on ethics and AI, including but not limited to data, privacy, intellectual property, human labor, environmental concerns, copyright, and more, please see the Topics For Your Consideration section of this LibGuide.