How can generative AI be a strong intellectual partner in your studies?

In the video below, Camilla Finsterbach Kaup, PhD, Associate Professor shows how you can use AI to understand complex academic texts, sharpen your curiosity and strengthen critical thinking, while maintaining control over the pitfalls and limitations of the technology.

Based on her research with university students and with a practice-oriented perspective, Camilla Finsterbach Kaup focuses on how AI can function as a partner in your academic work and not replace human thinking. Instead, we must work to support and strengthen learning and critical reflection. Particularly when the technology is used in a structured process.

Despite the challenges of AI being a "black box", having built-in bias, hallucinations, and the importance of understanding how the systems actually work, Camilla encourages us to leave guilt and fear behind and instead focus on judgment, transparency and academic use.

A key message is that AI should not be a shortcut, but a thinking partner, a tool that can support dialogue, challenge assumptions and help create knowledge in community.

A chatbot that doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear... 

Get more out of your project work with a Socratic PBL Copilot agent. Instead of serving up ready-made solutions, this agent acts as a critical partner, challenging your choices and tries to support your academic development.

A Copilot agent is an AI chatbot that has been assigned a predetermined role and specific instructions (a system prompt). It acts as a specialized assistant; it already knows its framework and purpose, so you don't have to instruct it from scratch and can jump straight to the task itself.

Among other things, the agent can help you:

• Sharpen your problem statement and identify blind spots
• Strengthen your methodological and theoretical argumentation
• Reflect on both the direction of the project and your own learning outcomes
• Work iteratively from the first ideas to the final discussion

The tool is based directly on AAU's PBL model and is designed to stimulate your independent thinking and responsible use of generative AI.

You can ask simple or advanced questions; you can upload working papers or your entire project report and ask about the text.

Add the agent to your AAU Copilot account

Keep in mind that the answers provided by the agent are AI-generated and therefore may contain errors or erroneous recommendations. Always consult your supervisor if you are unsure whether to follow its recommendations.

Learn how to use generative AI critically, safely, and transparently

In this presentation, Helle Brink of Aalborg University Library provides an introduction to a number of modules that help you use generative AI critically and responsibly in your academic work.

The presentation covers everything from good academic practice and transparency to data security, copyright, prompts, and the human and technological biases that affect output. Through specific examples and practical advice, Helle explains what data you can upload, how to declare the use of AI, how to avoid cognitive traps, and how to develop stronger prompt and evaluation skills.

When you are looking for an internship, job or are in contact with a company or organization

Generative AI can be a helping hand for many things and can also be used in searching for a job or internship and in clarifying your competencies. How can you go about this and what are the pitfalls? AAU Career helps you with good advice and specific examples from ideas, prompts and tools to the importance of the human aspect in the process.

You have to help the machine

Make yourself stand out. This is one of the most important pieces of advice when writing your CV and application, and when you contact a potential collaboration partner, such as in connection with your project work. Your material and approach should be personalized and adapted to the company. Therefore, generative AI cannot stand alone. 

You can certainly use generative AI constructively in the process. But be attentive to using it with critical reflection. The output of generative AI can very often take on the character of being general, and the recipient cannot "sense" you and who you are. So, you have to show who you are, presenting yourself and your profile when you, for example, apply for a job.

AAU Career has compiled a number of specific examples on how you can use AI as support without writing yourself out of the process. 

Read more about the use of AI in job and internship search

Meet AI LAB! AAU's supercomputer for students that takes your projects far beyond what your laptop can handle

AI LAB is Aalborg University's high-performance computing platform developed for students and teaching staff who work on demanding AI, machine learning and data-intensive projects. In this video, Frederik Petri Svenningsen of CLAAUDIA, Aalborg University provides an introduction to how AI LAB provides access to powerful GPU resources so you can train advanced models, run large simulations or process extensive image datasets.