The Politehnica University of Timișoara regulates the use of artificial intelligence

The Politehnica University of Timișoara is among the first public educational institutions in Romania to regulate the use of applications that employ artificial intelligence for generating scientific content. This includes the use of this technology for projects within courses as well as for publishing scientific articles. It is important to note that the use of these tools is done in compliance with ethical and professional norms within the academic environment, including proper citation in the projects and works carried out by students in the faculties of UPT.

One essential rule that every student must abide by is that any content generated by programs utilizing artificial intelligence should not be presented as truth, statement, or personal opinion, but rather analyzed and processed from the perspective of the user and the purpose for which the user chose to employ it. Furthermore, the results obtained from using artificial intelligence tools should explicitly mention the system used, as well as the date of access. This rule applies even to bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral theses.

“This summer marks the first session for final exams in which students have access to these tools that employ artificial intelligence. It is quite clear that many will attempt to use ChatGPT or other similar applications to generate content, so we have decided to regulate this aspect. We are not prohibiting it, obviously, but rather creating a set of rules and guidelines for students to know how to use these tools, what is permitted, and what is not permitted,” stated Florin Drăgan, the Rector of Politehnica University of Timișoara.

Students using text generated by AI software must ensure that they do not violate legal provisions regarding copyright, confidential data and information, as well as personal data. Users can obtain some basic information by carefully reading and analyzing the terms provided by the AI tool. Additionally, users must consider the fact that these applications can also generate incorrect content or information.

“When we took on this subject in the university Senate, we started from a few premises: the development of artificial intelligence tools will continue globally regardless of whether some recommend stopping this activity. The issue is extremely topical and discussed in the international academic environment, and there are already certain universities and professional associations that have heavily regulated this field. We started from the premise that the field is experiencing exponential growth and chose not to introduce provisions in our regulations yet, but rather to provide a series of recommendations. We began with discussions with colleagues abroad and from the similar experiences of organizations such as the European University Association (representing over 800 universities in 48 European countries) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (the largest technical professional organization worldwide dedicated to the development of technology for the benefit of humanity),” stated Radu Vasiu, the President of the Senate of Politehnica University of Timișoara.

On the other hand, academic staff will take additional measures to verify and evaluate students. One such measure will be to allocate more time for the oral defense of papers prepared by students, in order to determine if the user has understood the content generated by AI applications and if they comment on it creatively or critically. In the case of the defense of papers for the completion of studies, the statement of authenticity completed by candidates will include a section regarding the use or non-use of AI tools in the process of paper development.

“If a lecturer suspects that a student has come with a text generated by AI tools and has not mentioned or taken responsibility for it, they have the possibility to use applications that accurately recognize texts generated by artificial intelligence. One such application is Turnitin, which has already been tested by our colleagues and can be a very good identification tool,” stated Florin Drăgan, the Rector of UPT.