Navigating AI in research

Our new Use of AI in Research landing page, found under the Research Support tab on the RES Hub website, invites researchers and professional staff to explore the evolving role of AI and learn how to engage with it, not just as a tool but as a collaborator in discovery, analysis and innovation.  

At UTS, we want to help enable researchers to unlock the potential of AI in research, whilst also helping them navigate many considerations such as following UTS policies and procedures, maintaining research quality and integrity and assessing ethical and social risks. 

“We want researchers to use AI and to use all tools available to them, AI or not, to enhance their research, but there are a number of considerations to be had around research quality, ethical use of AI, cyber security, IP and data protections for example,” Support Lead, Research Initiatives for Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Dr Serena Ekman said. 

“Instead of approaching it as ‘you can't do this, you can't do that’, we want to encourage you and to encourage the safe and appropriate use of AI. Let's not forget that UTS is a research institution and a big player in this space.” 

Using AI in research 

The Use of AI in Research Guidelines were created by a team of UTS academics and professional research staff.  

Similarly, our new AI in Research pages on RES Hub have been written and reviewed by a combination of academics and professionals to try our best to ensure that they contain correct governance and support information whilst also answering the commonly asked questions by academics. 

Visit these pages to learn how to: 

Serena encourages everyone to tap in to the AI training support and resources available at UTS. 

“There are drop-in clinics from eResearch and the library. There are online training modules you can look at. There are communities of practice that researchers can go to. There are physical people that you can go up to and ask questions,” she said. 

“There's a wealth of information out there, and now it's a lot easier to find it on RES Hub via the new Use of AI in Research pages.” 

Thinking about using AI tools? 

The Selecting AI Tools for Research webpage has been designed alongside the Use of AI in Research Guidelines to help researchers consider all aspects of using AI in their research. The UTS GenAI Guidelines for Users have also been developed by ITU to help explain the differences between predictive and generative AI. 

Research, unless published, is considered to be sensitive data (learn more via the UTS Research Data Classifier Decision Support Tool), and CoPilot (when signed into a UTS account) is currently the only AI tool that has been approved by ITU for Internal, Sensitive and Confidential use.