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Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision: Artifical Intelligence

Resources for course work and research

Artificial Intelligence

Large language models of Artificial Intelligence are trained on massive amounts of text data from books, articles, and websites. They produce responses based on probability rather than understanding, and their output may sometimes be incorrect or biased. Claude and ChatGPT are examples of large language models.

Perplexity uses large language models to search and summarize current information on the internet; it includes source links. 

Notebook LM, Elicit, and Undermind are research assistants. Google's NotebookLM organizes, summarizes, and provides notes on resources you upload. Elicit quickly searches academic papers using natural language to match concepts even without exact keywords. Undermind searches academic papers using concept-based analysis. It walks you through refining your prompts to extract, organize, and rank the most relevant results, which takes more time.

EBSCO has introduced natural language into their search queries. EBSCO, ProQuest, and JSTOR provide beta versions of AI Research Assistants within the results screen. These tools may help you grasp the focus of an article, chapter, or book and assess its relevance to your research. Results vary by database, so check the specific features available in each.

Some Possible Uses

  • Use AI as a conversational partner to explore, refine, and expand potential research topics.
  • Request a list of sources addressing your research topic; always use library databases to verify citations and peer-review status.
  • Summarize and identify key concepts in resources.

Some Cautions

  • Privacy - Do not provide information to an open large language model that you would not publish on the internet. There are significant questions about how the data is used, stored, and protected.
  • Accuracy - Always verify results using trusted academic sources. Programs may provide incorrect information, or fake information or citations.
  • Bias - Evaluate results for race, gender, class, and other biases.
  • Academic Integrity - See the Denver Seminary Policy.
  • Environmental Impact - The operation of large language models requires substantial energy and water usage, producing wastewater and emissions. While they are becoming more efficient, increasing LLM adoption may be offsetting the gains.
  • Copyright - Works generated solely by AI are not eligible for copyright protection; those involving human creativity may qualify (Copyright Office, May 2025). The use of copyrighted material to train AI continues to be litigated. The courts, not the Copyright Office, will decide what qualifies as fair use and what requires licensing (Copyright Office, May 2025).