Abstracts

Balazs Aczel (Eötvös Loránd University)

Consensus-based principles for AI-usage in research

The future of scientific research is expected to be significantly influenced by the presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) but without a well-defined conceptual framework, guidelines, or policy, the trajectory of this transformative development remains uncertain. While AI could drastically increase the quality and efficiency of research, there also lies a considerable risk of compromising research safety, degrading scientific quality, and evading responsibility for potentially adverse outcomes if these principles are not rigorously upheld. Our interdisciplinary expert panel reached a consensus on these overarching principles and the underlying values for responsible AI usage in research, providing essential preparatory steps and offering a comprehensive checklist to ensure adherence to these standards.

Sebastiaan Mathôt (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Developing custom teaching tools that use large language models

Large language models have taken the world by storm. As teachers, our focus has so far mainly been on dealing with students’ use of ChatGPT for written assignments. We have taken few steps to integrate LLMs into our teaching in ways that do not use ChatGPT or similar web interfaces, in part because the underlying technology seems daunting and out of reach. In this talk, I will show how we can integrate LLMs into our teaching, using as an example Heymans, an AI tutor that we are developing in Groningen, and that we have already piloted in a number of courses. Heymans mainly provides automated grading of open-ended exams, and interactive formative quizzes based on textbook material. This makes it possible to use these valuable teaching methods with large numbers of students. I will argue that we should not let ourselves become dependent on commercial providers (OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, etc.), but rather that we can and should leverage the considerable resources and knowledge that we, as educational organizations, have at our disposal to take ownership of this new technology so that we can use it on our terms.