Use of artificial intelligence (AI) at the Faculty of Medicine
This guide explains how you, as a student at the Faculty of Medicine, can use AI responsibly in your studies, which tools are available, and what you should be aware of to avoid ethical and legal issues.
Main content
The UiB guidelines for integrity and cheating have been updated. These also discuss the use of artificial intelligence. However, we see that students at the Faculty of Medicine need some clarification on this topic.
Opportunities and Challenges of Using AI in Studies
AI is an exciting and useful technology that can contribute to both learning and development for you as a student provided that you use it wisely. It is important to be aware of the ethical, legal and professional framework for AI-based tools. Keep in mind that no AI tool is truly intelligent – they're just good at imitating human intelligence. A text generation tool is trained to answer your questions anyway. If it can't find the answer in its database, it will be "creative" and answer something that it thinks might be true. If you criticize the answer you get, it will correct its original answer, even if you may be wrong. They struggle to distinguish between evidence-based facts and unsubstantiated claims, so-called "fake news". In addition, they mainly use data and sources from Western, English-speaking countries and are currently poor on gender balance, cultural differences, and ethnic variation.
You can use this type of tools to increase your own learning and development, as well as learning to be critical to the answers. It is also worth noting that the various AI-tools available on the market are good at different things.
The various solutions will rapidly be more advanced and better at integrating more functions into the same model (multimodal models or foundation models).
Remember that you are here to learn and that it is neither appropriate nor confidence-inspiring to rely on AI to find answers to all questions in a busy professional life. You are always responsible for the work you submit regardless of the help you get.
Here are some examples of what you can use AI for
- Ideas and inspiration: AI tools can be used to create a suggestion for a text based on a topic or question. This can help you to find inspiration, arguments, examples, or sources for assignments. You must nevertheless be critical to the text produced, and always refer to the tool used.
- Improve language: You can use various tools to check grammar, spelling errors, word choice or style in your text. However, keep in mind that the tool does not always provide correct or appropriate suggestions, so all proposals must be critically assessed.
- Learn new things: You can use AI tools to get a general overview of a new topic, subject, or field.
- As a study buddy: You can make a chatbot ask you questions from the syllabus, or to give you examples of different exam questions you can solve alone or with fellow students. Be skeptical to the answers given. Keep in mind that they may be taken from a different curriculum and/or medical practice than the one currently used in Norway. The less you know about a topic, the more difficult it will be to verify the quality of the information you receive. It may be a good idea to compare with a textbook or other quality-assured source provided by the instructor. Ask for constructive feedback on your own texts.
- Practice of clinical situations, dialogue and diagnostics: You can ask a chatbot to create a role play or clinical task you, where you are the doctor/dentist/nutritionist, etc. Together, you can create a dialogue that will lead to a diagnosis, the right treatment or the right drug. An example of such a prompt could be: "Give me a fictitious blood test result and anamnesis of a patient who is in an emergency department and has a defined diagnosis. I will try to reason and guess the diagnosis from the blood tests. Give me feedback when I’m done." The more specific you are, the better it responds. It takes some practice to excel at making such prompts.
- To help you organize your student life: For example, you could ask it to make a schedule for getting through the syllabus in time for exams that matches your other activities.
AI tools cannot be used for
- Accept the information without checking whether it is correct
- Construct data, images or movies without indicating that AI has been used
- Copy text directly without clearly indicating that it comes from an AI tool
- Submitting personally identifiable information
- Write exams, home assignments, bachelor's and master's theses with text that is fully or partly generated by AI (unless otherwise stated)
- Uploading patient data, unpublished manuscripts (such as master theses) or lecture handouts to get a summary in public AI tools
Declaration when submitting independent assignments such as home exams, bachelor's, master's and master's theses
- State which levels of AI have been used in your work in a self-declaration statement at the end of the document.
- If a literature search is a part of the assignment, this should be described in the material and methods section of major works, such as bachelor and master theses and in the end declaration in minor works .
- Tables, figures and other illustrations must be clearly marked in the table and figure legends. The assignment or course description indicates which support materials and which levels you may use.
You are responsible for the assignment you submit, regardless of the use of AI.
Do not upload unpublished work (e.g. your master's draft or previous master's theses), syllabus or other teaching materials in a public AI application.
How to document the use of AI tools in your assignment
See examples of different uses of AI and how to document them.
A) AI as support for general activities, where the AIgenerated content is not copied directly into the text
Example
Help with:
- with proofreading, including common correctors and applications such as Gammarly
- with writing an outline/draft
- with choosing a theme
- to learn professional terms and short formulations (typically of a couple of words)
- to write your own programs in languages such as Stata, R and Python
- with knowledge acquisition in assignments*
How to declare
Not necessary.
*If the knowledge acquisition (literature search) is part of the thesis (e.g. meta-analyses or review articles), follow the guidelines for the assignment and state how the references are found.
B) AI as support for editing and improvement of your work
Example
To simplify, improve or translate self-produced text. This applies to reformulations and structural changes that are more extensive than mere proofreading.
How to declare
Specify program.
C) AI as support for visual representations that are not part of their own results
Example
- Figures that illustrate a point or method.
- Table or text box that explains or summarizes a topic.
How to declare
Specify the program and which images it concerns. If the presentation is a reworked version of someone else's presentation, cite the source.
D) AI as support for the presentation of academic content
Example
- Creation of figures, graphs, images and tables based on your own data/results/analyses.
- Creation of code.
How to declare
Specify the program used in the figure/table legends.
E) AI as support for interpreting and discussing academic content
Example
AI as support to analyze a qualitative text AI as support to analyze a figure, image, or table.
How to declare
Specify program.
F) AI as support for generating text
Example
The use of AI to generate completely new text, which cannot be said to be part of normal language editing.
How to declare
Specify program.
G AI as support for generating an entire answer. NB: This is only relevant if this is an explicit order in the assignment itself
Example
The entire work is created by KI and controlled and adjusted by the student.
How to declare
Specify program and prompts. A self-declaration is not necessary as this is part of the task.
