Reliability Natural language models and chatbots are trained to generate human-like text in response to a prompt. This does not necessarily create truthful or reliable answers. These tools are limited by a body of training data called a corpus. The free version of ChatGPT includes information from the internet through September 2021.
Transparency Chatbots and language models are not specifically created to locate and credit the sources for their responses.
Bias Though data sources cover at least 40 languages, there is a bias toward English language material. ChatGPT has also been censored and is being touted as a possible social media content moderation tool itself.
Equity Many generative AI tools were trained on large collections of material on the internet without prior consent or involvement from the human creators.
In the file of AI, a hallucination is a plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answer. When asked for sources for information, large language models has been found to create fake citations.
If the scholarly article has a citation, one potential and fast way to check to see if the article citation was AI-generated is to check the DOI. The library subscribes to a service called LibKey.io that can search for an article using its DOI.
Examples of an AI-Generated Citation for Libkey.io Demonstration:
Zare, M., & Piran, P. (2022). Moving from administration to faculty: Perspectives from the academy. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 44(1), 76-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2021.1942616
Steps:
1. Go to LibKey.io (Linked above).
2. Copy-paste in the DOI (the link in the citation starting with doi.org; other links won't work on this site).
3. Does the DOI lead to the article? The example leads to an error page as of July 2023 because no article as currently using that DOI. Other AI-generated articles sometimes use existing DOIs so the link leads to a completely different article.
Some considerations:
-Typically, non-scholarly content like newspaper articles or chapters of popular/non scholarly books do not receive DOIs.
-Many older or more niche articles have not been assigned DOIs.
-Sometimes there is a technical problem with a DOI related to the publisher site. Please contact the library if you have any questions; we can open a ticket with the publisher if we suspect a problem.
-The wrong DOI in a citation can be simple human error (copy-paste/transcription error).