Generative AI

The following guidance is shared to help support students in navigating the appropriate use of AI in their classes.

• Absent a clear statement from a course instructor granting permission, the use of Generative AI tools to complete an assignment or exam is prohibited. The unauthorized use of AI shall be treated similarly to unauthorized assistance and/or plagiarism (page 11 of Standards and Discipline).
• Students are encouraged to speak with their instructors regarding their expectations.

The University offers many support resources regarding academic integrity, for both instructors and students. You can find an overview of academic integrity resources–including considerations for AI tools–in the Promoting Academic Integrity resource, co-created and adapted from the faculty booklet Promoting Academic Integrity & Preventing Academic Dishonesty: Best Practices at Columbia University.

For additional guidance, please refer to full-text of the Generative AI Policy.

The following guidance is shared to help support faculty in navigating the appropriate use of AI in the classroom.

• At minimum, it is recommended that faculty share clear expectations at the beginning of each semester through the syllabus, policy distribution, and class discussion on the appropriate use of AI tools. Faculty can encourage students to reach out when they need support rather than risking a potential academic integrity violation. If permitted by the course, encourage students to acknowledge and cite any use of AI applications.
• It is recommended to develop a course policy about the use of AI tools and what faculty consider to be appropriate and inappropriate in their classes. For example, you may find it useful to include AI discussions in the classroom and online threads. Some instructors have partnered with students as they determine what constitutes appropriate use. This conversation and partnership can create opportunities for instructors and students to talk in detail about the evolution of particular tools, their potential benefits in specific disciplines, and their limitations. It is also an opportunity to be explicit about the course objectives and how the use of AI tools might interfere with or aid students’ learning and their achievement of particular goals.
• Refer to introductory guidance and considerations for AI tools in the classroom from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). Additionally, the CTL offers individual consultations, Faculty AI Labs, and AI Learning Communities by request from schools or departments.
• Important note about AI detection tools: Since the introduction of AI tools, there has been a parallel rise in tools claiming accurate detection of AI-generated work. As with any form of detection software, there are risks of misidentification, which can have consequences in the classroom. These products are best used with careful consideration and as one of many ways to work with students. It is also important to include the use of these tools in any discussion with students around course policies, making clear why and how such services may be used in the course. As with other plagiarism detection tools, AI detection should be treated as a guideline and not a grading metric.

The University offers many support resources regarding academic integrity, for both instructors and students. You can find an overview of academic integrity resources–including considerations for AI tools–in the Promoting Academic Integrity resource, co-created and adapted from the faculty booklet Promoting Academic Integrity & Preventing Academic Dishonesty: Best Practices at Columbia University.

For additional guidance, please refer to full-text of the Generative AI Policy.

The policies above apply to all Columbia research activity. In addition, the following considerations and policies also extend to all research activity using AI:

• As with other tools and research methods, individuals who use Generative AI in research must be transparent regarding its use, in describing methods, acknowledgements, or elsewhere, as appropriate.
• Generative AI has been found to, among other things, generate citations to papers that do not exist by authors who do not exist, and has also been used to generate images for experiments that were never actually conducted. Researchers are responsible for the accuracy of any content created by AI that is included in any research output and must use caution in utilizing AI output in research.
• Researchers are expected to follow the policies of journals, funding agencies and professional societies through which they report their research. For example, some journals, such as Science, explicitly prohibit text, figures, images or graphics generated by ChatGPT or any other AI tools.
• Researchers must avoid uploading, or using as input, any unpublished research data or other Confidential Information into a Generative AI tool.
  • When a researcher inputs unpublished work of any kind into a Generative AI tool, the unpublished work becomes part of the universe of data in the AI. The model may incorporate the unpublished work into responses to queries from other researchers. Disclosure of the unpublished work to an AI tool may also impede or prevent future intellectual property protection for the unpublished work or give rise to privacy violations.
• Researchers must avoid uploading, or using as input, other parties’ Confidential Information. Generative AI tools may not provide protection for Confidential Information and their use could create the potential to breach confidential contractual commitments.
  • This includes, e.g., unpublished manuscripts or funding proposals that researchers may be asked to peer review.  NIH and NSF, among others, prohibit using Generative AI for peer review.
  • This also includes the Personal Information of research subjects. For example, inputting interview data to perform preliminary analysis creates the possibility that quotations or other information from research subjects could become public, and potentially, that subjects could also be identified.
• Researchers should be mindful that the output of AI tools may infringe the rights of third parties since the responses generated are pooled from already established works.

Finally, all University research is subject to the University’s research integrity policies, such as the Institutional Policy on Misconduct in Research and the Policy on Financial Conflicts of Interest and Research.  More information about these policies is available on the Office of Research Compliance and Training website.

For additional guidance, please refer to full-text of the Generative AI Policy.