Artificial intelligence (AI) is a fact of life and has been for quite some time. It's only recently that we have seen it incorporated into apps for a mainstream audience. Always ask your instructor about their policy on using AI for class assignments.
Q:What is AI?
A: AI is the use of computers to imitate the behavioral aspects of human reasoning and learning.
Q:What is ChatGPT?
A: ChatGPT is a chatbot and virtual assistant that uses a Large Language Model to sort and organize data and language into a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language. It relies on input (prompts) from users and training on data and language to mimic human language patterns and generate responses. Chat GPT has a search component, but that was not part of the original software.
Q: What is a Large Language Model?
A: A Large Language Model is a computation structure that is capable of generating language or other natural (everyday) language processing tasks. It is "trained" on massive amounts of data that it can use to predict language patterns in speech and text.
Q: How can I search the web using AI?
A: ChatGPT released ChatGPT Search in October 2024, joining a plethora of other AI-assisted search tools. ChatGPT Search will choose to search the web based on what you ask, or you can manually choose to search by clicking the web search icon. Most search engines now incorporate AI in their search function.
Q: Should I use ChatGPT as a research tool?
A: A June 2025 study published in arXiv yielded extremely concerning results about the effects of long-term AI use on the brain's cognitive and analytical ability. Over time, study subjects showed significantly reduced capacity to learn, understand and recall information due to diminished activity in the brain's neural pathways. This is the first of what are sure to be many studies on this topic. Current thinking is to proceed with extreme caution, not only with everyday research but also with academic research.
Sources:
Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y.T., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I. & Maes, P. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task. arXiv.
Russell, S.J. & Norvig, P. (2021). Artificial intelligence: A modern approach (4th ed.). Hoboken: Pearson.
Wong, A. (2025) The entire Internet is reverting to beta. The Atlantic.
AI can help you answer your questions quickly and on your own, but it is terrible for forming the relationships that make you someone businesses want to hire! Data gathered by Julia Freeland-Fisher, director of research at the Clayton Christensen Institute (a non-profit that studies how various innovations unlock prosperity and human potential), shows that “Over time,...students have fewer and fewer people in their corner who can help them in other moments of struggle, who can help them in ways a bot might not be capable of.”
Forging the human connection:
Sources:
Chambliss, D. & Takacs, C.(2014). How college works. Harvard University Press.
Fang, C.M., Lin., A.R., Danry, V., Lee, E., Chan, S.W.T., Pataranutaporn. P., Maes, P, Phang, J., Lampe, M., Ahmad, L., & Agarwal, S. How AI and human behaviors shape psychosocial effects of chatbot use: a longitudinal randomized controlled study. ArXiv.
Mathewson, T.G. (2025). AI is helping students be more independent, but the isolation could be career poison. The Markup.
A June 2025 study published in arXiv yielded extremely concerning results about the effects of long-term AI use on the brain's cognitive and analytical ability. Over time, study subjects showed significantly reduced capacity to learn, understand and recall information due to diminished activity in the brain's neural pathways. This is the first of what are sure to be many studies on this topic, but with AI chatbots already returning false responses to simple queries, these reported effects on people's ability to recognize and avoid misinformation make it all the more likely that misinformation and disinformation will become ubiquitous in our culture. Stay tuned.
Image: https://pixy.org/4488352/ via a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license
Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y.T., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I. & Maes, P. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task. arXiv.
Wong, A. (2025) The entire Internet is reverting to beta. The Atlantic.