Navigating AI Responsibly: A Practical Guide from the Pace Library

It’s our new best friend!

It’s the end of critical thought!

It will destroy/revolutionize education!

Many if not most of us are grappling with understanding and learning a suddenly pervasive technology: generative AI (GenAI). Like most new technologies, GenAI carries a load of anxieties along with its benefits, presenting not only skills issues but also wider ethical questions.

Though the death of writing appears to have been exaggerated, there is still plenty to be concerned about during this rapid adoption. Is it possible to use GenAI in a way that feels safe and principled?

Here are a few things you might worry about when using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any of the array of AI models, and how you might adjust your practices.

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Privacy

Since the advent of GenAI tools, privacy has been an issue. Any info that you put into a GenAI tool—including the content you create, like prompts or material you upload to work on—can theoretically be used to train the AI. If it trains on your work, your work may come out in another user’s output.

Big AI companies usually claim that user information is not used as training material, but their privacy policies and terms of use say otherwise.

An even more obvious privacy problem comes from the fact that AI companies can collect your identity and contact data, IP address (which indicates your location), device and network information, and possibly other information as available to them.

What can I do to safeguard my privacy?

Better safe than sorry. You can proactively opt out of having your data kept and possibly used by an AI company by finding the opt-out process. (Not all US states have opt-out requirements for companies that gather personal data, but enough of them do that there should be a mechanism.) The companies don’t make it easy to locate, but it is usually in the privacy policy or the terms of use.

Environmental Cost

Generative AI is extremely sophisticated and powerful, and it requires sophisticated and powerful computers to run it. These, in turn, demand enormous amounts of energy and water.

It has been estimated by The Washington Post that every prompt entered into a GenAI tool consumes about a bottle’s worth of water. That’s not a lot, but it’s 10 times as much as a Google search, and over the course of a big project, you could end up using a truckload of bottles.

What can I do to reduce AI-induced waste?

Abandoning AI isn’t the answer. Even the greenest among us are using resources all the time—simply by being alive—and it’s possible that AI will be able to reduce our energy use in the long run. For now, while the short-term costs are high, the best thing you can do is be efficient about how you use it.

Learn how to write good prompts (you can use LinkedIn Learning through Pace ITS or review Pace’s resources on prompting), think them out beforehand, and you’ll need to use fewer of them.

Loss of Skills

This is the one that probably worries us, as university affiliates, the most. We’re in the business of teaching and learning; what happens when we outsource planning, writing, even drawing to AI? It seems like uniquely human abilities—critical thinking, logical planning, creativity—can’t help but atrophy.

What can I do to make sure my skills stay sharp?

Don’t panic. ChatGPT may be able to produce 500 readable words that address a topic, but truly useful content requires a lot of human intervention. AI doesn’t do your weightlifting for you; it’s the gym equipment that makes it easy and convenient for you to do the weightlifting yourself.

As a result, those high-level intellectual skills are still very much required to get good results out of GenAI. A prompt that produces what you want must be planned and broken down, step by step, and written carefully with attention to detail and subject-specific knowledge.

Conclusion

These aren’t the only issues with AI, and these suggestions aren’t the only ways to improve your relationship with AI. But, if you’re a member of the Pace Community, the Pace Library can help you with specific questions, instruction, class policies, and more. Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to balance these ethical challenges with AI’s potential, ensuring AI is used effectively, thoughtfully, and responsibly.

For more information, check out the Pace Library’s faculty and student guides to AI, or set up an appointment with a librarian in NYC or Westchester.