ChatGPT and Works Scholarly: Best Practices and Legal Pitfalls in Writing with AI

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have raised questions about whether the use of AI is appropriate and legal in various professional contexts. Here, we present a perspective on how scholars may approach writing in conjunction with AI, and offer approaches to evaluating whether or not such AI-writing violates copyright or falls within the safe harbor of fair use. We present a set of best practices for standard of care with regard to plagiarism, copyright, and fair use. As AI is likely to grow more capable in the coming years, it is appropriate to begin integrating AI into scholarly writing activities. We offer a framework for establishing sound legal and scholarly foundations.

The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans

As AI systems proliferate, their greenhouse gas emissions are an increasingly important concern for human societies. We analyze the emissions of several AI systems (ChatGPT, BLOOM, DALL-E2, Midjourney) relative to those of humans completing the same tasks. We find that an AI writing a page of text emits 130 to 1500 times less CO2e than a human doing so. Similarly, an AI creating an image emits 310 to 2900 times less. Emissions analysis do not account for social impacts such as professional displacement, legality, and rebound effects. In addition, AI is not a substitute for all human tasks. Nevertheless, at present, the use of AI holds the potential to carry out several major activities at much lower emission levels than can humans.