Ever since generative artificial intelligence took the world by storm, every industry on the planet has been reckoning with AI ethics and responsibility. Generative AI ethics is a new and expanding field, with many questions yet to be answered. We’ve put together a few tips on ethical AI use for anyone wrestling with incorporating artificial intelligence into their life and working responsibly.
Use Generative AI At the Right Time
With all the incredible capabilities of generative AI, it can be tough to separate what ethical AI use looks like. One of the cornerstones of AI responsibility is to be selective with when and how you use this platform in your creative process. Whether you’re researching a scientific paper or using ChatGPT to help you write emails, this tool should be used to enable you, not to entirely supersede your process.
Consider using AI to brainstorm, explore a particular idea, or provide a list of resources you can explore for whatever you’re trying to create. In later stages, it can also be very effective for summarising what you’ve created and clarifying which messages are most present.
Find Source Material Where Possible
Platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini are tapped into vast amounts of data, which can obscure original source material and damage the integrity of any research. Although you might find some excellent points while researching using these generative AI platforms, things can occasionally get lost in translation. That’s why digging deeper when you find these golden nuggets is vital, asking for information on the source material and using them as markers to explore further and ensure that the right points have come through.
With this approach, you can appropriately credit any information you find and build on, bolstering your knowledge of the particular field by parsing all that research.
Lean on AI’s Strengths, and Lean on Yours Too
Generative AI is, first and foremost, a program meant to parse an enormous amount of data and summarise it in response to a given set of parameters. In other words, it can only produce things according to what it already ‘knows’. This means that, while it’s not necessarily useful for creation in the initial stages, it is an excellent tool for structuring your thoughts or putting a skeleton to large projects.
The key to successfully and ethically using generative AI is to use it to find ways to bridge your strength gaps. If you’re an excellent writer who struggles to get started, you might use AI to kick off your writing process with a brainstorm. If you’re an accountant who is fantastic with numbers but struggles with communication, generative AI might be your ideal email companion.
At the end of the day, generative AI platforms are tools just like any other. AI responsibility has fuzzy edges for many at the moment, but with the right commitment to figuring out what generative AI ethics really looks like, it’s possible to figure out ethical AI use once and for all.