Research Guides: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education: How Generative A.I. Works

Origin of This Guide

This resource guide arose out of an ad hoc group organized by PACE (Professional and Academic Center for Excellence) in Feb 2023 to help launch the campus conversation around AI generative tools such as ChatGPT.

We hope that this guide will serve as a dynamic, living tool for everyone across campus, for as long as it remains helpful.

Understanding A.I. Text Generators, Such as ChatGPT

ChatGPT can generate a sequence of words – 'language' – that, based on statistics, has a pretty good chance of being language that makes sense. ...A friend refers to it as a really advanced autocomplete." - Sara Brumfield, "From the Page" [blog]

What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?
ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about OpenAI's GPT-3 tool
An interview with AI: What ChatGPT says about itself
Why ChatGPT doesn’t understand what it’s saying
"GPT-3 is an artificial software system that predicts the next word. It does not need to get anything done with those predictions in the real world."

Understanding A.I. Image/Art Generators

"Because natural language is used both when engaging with ChatGPT and when it generates answers, we are more inclined to personify the software. ...But the first component of AI Literacy is knowing that large language models like ChatGPT cannot and do not think."
- Emily Zerrenner, 21 July 2023

What is "Artificial Intelligence"?

Understanding Machine Learning and Large Language Models (LLMs)

A Conceptual Guide to Transformers: Part I "Everybody has been chattering about chatGPT and other Large Language Models lately. ...These LLMs are all transformer models... My main goal in this sequence of posts is to provide a conceptual guide to transformers."

News: GPT-4 Released

...And it is substantially more powerful

GPT-4’s launch ‘another step change’ for AI and higher education
23 Mar, Times Higher Education