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Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Tools

Generative AI information and tools
Last Updated: Aug 29, 2024 12:20 PM

Evaluating AI Sources - ACT

Authority, Currency, & Truth

Authority, Currency, and Truth (ACT) is a tool to help you evaluate an online source. The tool provides a list of questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not an online source is reliable and credible. This can be useful when evaluating generative AI (GAI) sources.

(A)uthority - Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor? What are the author's credentials or organizational affiliations?

(C)urrency - When was the information published or posted?

(T)ruth - Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge?

Another common evaluation method is Currency, Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose (CRAAP). See the guide from the University of Central Michigan Libraries for more information. 

Misinformation

While Generative AI (GAI) tools can help users with such tasks as brainstorming for new ideas, organizing existing information, mapping out scholarly discussions, or summarizing sources, they are also notorious for misinformation—or not relying fully on factual information or rigorous research strategies. In fact, they are known for producing "hallucinations," an AI science term used to describe false information created by the AI system to defend its statements. Oftentimes, these "hallucinations" can be presented in a very confident manner and consist of partially or fully fabricated citations or facts. This makes it difficult to determine the authority of the source, and verify the information.

Certain AI tools have even been used to intentionally produce false images or audiovisual recordings to spread misinformation and mislead the audience. Referred to as "deep fakes," these materials can be utilized to subvert democratic processes and are thus particularly dangerous. 

Additionally, the information presented by generative AI tools may lack currency as some of the systems do not necessarily have access to the latest information. Rather, they may have been trained on past datasets, thus generating dated representations of current events and the related information landscape.

Recommendations

  • Students should consult with their instructors regarding the use of AI tools in their coursework.
  • Think ACT (Authority, Currency, Truth) or CRAAP (Currency, Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose) to help you evaluate the information.
  • Meticulously fact-check all of the information produced by GAI, including verifying the source of all citations the AI uses to support its claims.
  • Critically evaluate all AI output for any possible biases that can skew the presented information. 
  • Avoid asking the AI tools to produce a list of sources on a specific topic as such prompts may result in the tools fabricating false citations. 
  • When available, consult the AI developers' notes to determine if the tool's information is up-to-date.
  • Always remember that GAI tools are not search engines—they simply use large amounts of data to generate responses constructed to "make sense" according to common cognitive paradigms.

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