Student Guide to Responsible AI Use
Plain-language guidance helping students use generative AI legitimately: check the rules, stay the author, verify everything, disclose honestly.
Demonstration writing sample. This guide illustrates my student-facing instructional writing. Check your own institution’s rules — they take precedence over anything here.
The four habits
1. Check the rules for this task
AI rules differ between units and between tasks in the same unit. Before using any AI tool, find the task instructions and answer: what exactly am I allowed to use AI for here? If you cannot find an answer, ask your unit coordinator — before submitting, not after.
2. Stay the author
Use AI to help you think, not to think for you. A useful test: could you explain and defend every part of your submission in a conversation, without notes? If a paragraph contains an argument you could not reconstruct yourself, it is not yet your work.
3. Verify everything
AI tools produce confident text that can be wrong: invented references, misattributed ideas, plausible-sounding errors. Anything an AI contributed must be checked against real sources before it goes into your work. If you cannot verify it, cut it.
4. Disclose honestly
If your unit requires a declaration, describe what you actually did — briefly and specifically: “I used [tool] to [what you used it for].” Honest disclosure of permitted use is never punished worse than concealment.
Quick self-check before you submit
- I know what the task allowed, and I stayed within it.
- I can explain every argument in this work.
- I verified every fact and reference an AI touched.
- My declaration says what I actually did.
If you are unsure
Ask before you submit. A question to your coordinator costs nothing; an integrity process costs a great deal.