Instructions on the Use of AI by the ITSC Research Group

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a passing trend but a technology that is likely to remain an integral part of research, industry, and society. Ignoring its existence or potential is neither practical nor beneficial. Our research group therefore permits and encourages the responsible use of AI tools where they can support learning, research, and scientific work.

Access to answers is not the same as understanding. The value of academic work lies not in the ability to generate convincing text, code, or analyses, but in the ability to understand, evaluate, and defend them. Students remain fully responsible for all content submitted under their name, regardless of whether AI tools contributed to its creation, and must be prepared to defend all aspects of their work independently. The ability to explain one's work is considered evidence of understanding and a non-negotiable prerequisite for passing exams and thesis defenses.

This policy aims to help students to use AI effectively, critically, and ethically.

Critical Evaluation and Verification

AI systems can generate content that is inaccurate, incomplete, biased, misleading, or entirely fabricated. Moreover, AI-generated content often appears highly convincing even when it is incorrect. Students must therefore critically evaluate, verify, and reflect upon all AI-generated content before incorporating it into their work. In particular, students are responsible for verifying factual claims, mathematical derivations, scientific interpretations, references and citations, and program code.

Students must treat AI outputs as suggestions or hypotheses requiring validation, not as authoritative sources of knowledge.

Understanding and Competence

The central objective of academic work is understanding. Students must be able to explain, justify, and defend all essential aspects of their work without relying on AI tools. For example, a student who uses a research method or a mathematical argument must be able to explain:

• What the method does.
• Why it was chosen.
• Which assumptions it relies on.
• How the results should be interpreted.
• Which limitations it has.

Similarly, a student who uses AI-generated code must be able to explain how the code works and why it is correct.

How to use AI in scientific work?

Students are encouraged to use AI:

• To obtain alternative explanations.
• To explore unfamiliar topics.
• To identify relevant literature.
• To brainstorm ideas.
• To improve writing and presentation quality.
• To debug and review code.

Students must not use AI:

• As a substitute for understanding concepts and methods.
• As a substitute for studying.
• As a substitute for critical thinking.
• As a substitute for reading and understanding scientific literature.

Before incorporating AI-generated content into academic work, students must ask themselves:

1. Do I understand this well enough to explain it to another student?
2. Could I recognize if this output were wrong?
3. Have I independently verified the claims?
4. Would I be comfortable defending this statement in an examination or research meeting?
5. Does this reflect my understanding?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", further study and verification are required.

All use of AI tools must be disclosed

Students must:

• Identify all AI tools used during the preparation of their work and describe how and to what extent each tool was used (for example, brainstorming, literature exploration, coding assistance, language editing, summarization, data analysis, or drafting).
• Distinguish their own intellectual contributions from AI-generated contributions where appropriate.
• Retain records of prompts and AI outputs and provide them upon request by the supervisor or examiner. For projects in which AI played a substantial role, supervisors may require a complete prompt log as an appendix.

Undisclosed use of AI tools constitutes academic misconduct.

University Guidelines

The university guidlines for the use of AI can be found here: https://uniservice-dl.uni-wuppertal.de/de/ki-handreichungen/.

Declaration on Use of Generative AI

Students writing seminar, bachelor, or masters theses with our group, need to add the following declaration to their thesis:

I hereby declare that I have followed the university’s guidelines and the instructions of the ITSC research group for AI use.