What about artificial intelligence?
There has been a lot of discussion about artificial intelligence (AI) and various AI applications and tools, especially during the year 2023. Karelia UAS's thesis instructions (link opens in a new window) provide more details on the use of AI in theses, but AI can be used in many ways, such as in the planning and ideation phase of text creation. Read also the guidance about Use of AI in Karelia UAS Theses.
The best-known AI tool is ChatGPT, which can be used to interact with you in almost the same way as with a human and it responds to various questions or prompts on the fly. ChatGPT, Google Bard and Microsoft's Bing are examples of so-called generative AI. They combine the power of machine learning, deep learning and AI to generate new text, audio, video, images, etc. based on the data and feedback they are taught.
When using ChatGPT, it's important to remember that it does not have true content understanding, working a bit like predictive text input. ChatGPT might also hallucinate, i.e. make up what sound like real sources "out of thin air" and claim things that never happened or do not exist. ChatGPT and other generative AI tools either cannot access licensed databases such as those provided by the library (Ebsco databases, Terveysportti, RT Cards, O'Reilly, etc.), so their contents are automatically excluded from scientific searches. It is also worth remembering that ChatGPT has been trained with huge amounts of text, but only until 2021. It is not aware of events of information beyond that date. For these reasons, using it as a Google-like search engine is not advisable.
In addition to ChatGPT, there are a huge number of different AI-based applications designed for different purposes. AI can be used to help you create images, draw, write, edit photos, make music, etc. When using any AI application, it is important to remember that no confidential information, personal data, company secrets or sensitive data may be entered.
So where in particular should AI be used? ChatGPT, for example, is a good tool for exploring different perspectives and bouncing ideas. AI is also an excellent partner for summarizing, reformatting, and/or translating long texts. AI tools can therefore speed up certain processes and offer new perspectives on a topic, but you should be aware of their limitations and uses.
The University of Tampere Library's LibGuide provides more detailed and comprehensive information on AI from an information retrieval perspective: https://libguides.tuni.fi/information-searching-guide/information-searching-ai (link opens in a new window)