Ethical AI Chatbot usage

TLDR: I am worried about how to use AI without making yourself more stupid. Your personal rules and guidelines are very welcome 🙂

Hello Everyone!

I am a Master Student in Computer Science. I use AI ChatBots somewhat regularly in my day to day. I have set certain rules for my self to enable me to learn better and not just outsource my work to the AI.

For example: In CS the mathematical notation is often very inconsistent. So often times I read homework and dont understand what is meant by symbol in this context, either stemming from incorrect placement or general ambiguity. I then ask the AI what this symbol means. I never ask for the solution. In the worst case I might ask for hints but only If I have no idea on how to solve a problem.

I never ask for code. I might ask how to do x and y efficiently In a specific language but never a whole function or a whole problem. More like (and this is trivial) how to reverse a list. But I try to google before asking the AI since most often solutions lie ready on stackoverflow.

Searching for scientific papers is also something I do often with AI since I find navigating scholar to be somewhat confusing and time intensive. Like I am finding papers on the topic but It is near impossible for me to judge wether a publication is foundational, a classic, or fringe.

Now I find there are a lot of grey areas with AI usage and I fear that I might slip into bad habits that make me skip important learning steps. I therefore wanted to write a strict rule set that I can follow for „ethical“ AI usage. Not ethical in the sense wether its good or bad for the planet or society (these are extremely valid questions better asked in a separate discussion) but ethical in the sense of self-care and -growth. Like when does an interaction with AI go from helpful to harmful, when do loose out by beginning the interaction in the first place.

I try to orient my AI interactions around what is useful to me without AI doing it for me. I could spend 3-5 hours searching for papers on a topic, trying to to understand which role which paper plays and only afterwards actually reading them or I could just ask AI and get to reading papers in 5min. In both cases I want to read a paper and learn what it says.

What are your personal guidelines? Do you have strict rules? I am really curious how other people handle this. I see great risk with personal AI usage and I want to be conscious about how to do it safely for me.