Am I stupid for using Grok AI for college (social sciences)? Which AI do you use for college?

[noname223]

As everyone told me the lecturer did not give a fuck about me using AI. ( He did not say a word about it - I did not admit it) I heard the mark of two other people and I had the best mark compared to them. I had an 1,7. (1,0 is the best mark). The last time I used an AI heavily for college I also got an 1,7. I think though for better marks I had to invest more time into own research. I am a perfectionist but I think an 1,7 should be enough. I think though maybe AI hallucinated at one time. Either that or other people pretended bullshit about the text. It is so obvious I used AI ( I wonder whether my lecturer suspects something especially on the halluncination/ I am not 100% sure if it was one)
All my friends don't use AI for college. But I went to a self-help group this evening and someone said they use chatGPT. My lecturer even gave me a compliment for my writing style. My friends predicted I get complimented. In my paranoid mind I thought he will call me out for using AI and humiliate me in front of the others and I quit college as a consequence.

I once used chatGPT most of the time. But the answers are really short. Even when I explicitly demand a long answer. I mostly use AI for summaries and critique of texts.

I have the feeling Grok AI delivers better results. You can even use deep research for free. With chatGPT it is behind a paywall. But maybe deep research is a little bit of a disappointment for me. I expected it to be better.

I think they say Grok AI isn't suited for academia this much because of the tone. But I am pretty good at academic writing. I can reformulate it. That's a necessity for not getting caught anyway.

@derpyderpins I think you once wrote that you changed from chatGPT plus to Grok AI and a different AI. Which one was it? I hope I don't annoy you with this question.

 

[Odwin]

Use all the tools you get. There is no fair play. People who play "fair" always lose.

 

[derpyderpins]

As everyone told me the lecturer did not give a fuck about me using AI. ( He did not say a word about it - I did not admit it) I heard the mark of two other people and I had the best mark compared to them. I had an 1,7. (1,0 is the best mark). The last time I used an AI heavily for college I also got an 1,7. I think though for better marks I had to invest more time into own research. I am a perfectionist but I think an 1,7 should be enough. I think though maybe AI hallucinated at one time.

1,0 is best and 1,7 is good enough? What the fuck are these commie numbers? goddam europeans with their meters and commas.

Either that or other people pretended bullshit about the text. It is so obvious I used AI ( I wonder whether my lecturer suspects something especially on the halluncination/ I am not 100% sure if it was one)
All my friends don't use AI for college. But I went to a self-help group this evening and someone said they use chatGPT. My lecturer even gave me a compliment for my writing style. My friends predicted I get complimented. In my paranoid mind I thought he will call me out for using AI and humiliate me in front of the others and I quit college as a consequence.

I once used chatGPT most of the time. But the answers are really short. Even when I explicitly demand a long answer. I mostly use AI for summaries and critique of texts.

I have the feeling Grok AI delivers better results. You can even use deep research for free. With chatGPT it is behind a paywall. But maybe deep research is a little bit of a disappointment for me. I expected it to be better.

I think they say Grok AI isn't suited for academia this much because of the tone. But I am pretty good at academic writing. I can reformulate it. That's a necessity for not getting caught anyway.

@derpyderpins I think you once wrote that you changed from chatGPT plus to Grok AI and a different AI. Which one was it? I hope I don't annoy you with this question.

I do think Grok offers the best free experience atm, now that the grok website has workspaces so it can be organized better than on x. You said deep research is a bit of a disappointment, have you used "deeperresearch"? Just a setting to have it go a step farther. Use the grok website and you can give it instructions under settings to be more formal. It should also learn you a bit over time if you correct it with how you want it to respond.

The other one I'm using is Google Gemini. Its latest deep research release might be the best, although it doesn't use attachments at the same time so I still combine it with Grok sometimes, but on the other hand their 2.5 Pro (it's a reasoning model, so I guess it's like Grok think, but it's versatile and does everything) often can do bits of research well enough on its own until I isolate a key issue. For law, they've all gotten so much better at not feeding me fake case law, but I still have to be very careful and correct them sometimes, but damn uploading a good brief I wrote previously and telling it to tweak it to another case is nice. I like the google docs integration and whatnot. I do think both are better practically than ChatGpt was when I cancelled my subscription a couple months ago, although I'm sure they've come out with new models. I got tired of the 50 different stupidly named models.

Never annoying, man. I love talking AI.

 

[noname223]

1,0 is best and 1,7 is good enough? What the fuck are these commie numbers? goddam europeans with their meters and commas.


I do think Grok offers the best free experience atm, now that the grok website has workspaces so it can be organized better than on x. You said deep research is a bit of a disappointment, have you used "deeperresearch"? Just a setting to have it go a step farther. Use the grok website and you can give it instructions under settings to be more formal. It should also learn you a bit over time if you correct it with how you want it to respond.

The other one I'm using is Google Gemini. Its latest deep research release might be the best, although it doesn't use attachments at the same time so I still combine it with Grok sometimes, but on the other hand their 2.5 Pro (it's a reasoning model, so I guess it's like Grok think, but it's versatile and does everything) often can do bits of research well enough on its own until I isolate a key issue. For law, they've all gotten so much better at not feeding me fake case law, but I still have to be very careful and correct them sometimes, but damn uploading a good brief I wrote previously and telling it to tweak it to another case is nice. I like the google docs integration and whatnot. I do think both are better practically than ChatGpt was when I cancelled my subscription a couple months ago, although I'm sure they've come out with new models. I got tired of the 50 different stupidly named models.

Never annoying, man. I love talking AI.

Thanks a lot! Very informative (especially deeper research). And I agree it is better than chatGPT.

 

[locked*n*loaded]

I never cheated in any manner in college. All my work was entirely my own, created by my own hand. Graduated with a 3.9+ GPA in engineering. Using AI is nothing more than new-age cheating.

 

[Forever Sleep]

We didn't have AI chat applications in my day. (The olden days.) My uni was very strict about plagarism. Obviously- you have to refer to books and other people's theories but they emphasized how important it was to quote properly and make it clear whether an idea was your own or someone else's. I've also been involved in the creative industry since leaving uni so- copyright is pretty relevant to that field. I appreciate and try to respect the need for it.

AI is complicated because, it appears to blur the lines. However, AI itself is surely breaking copyright all over the place! You ask it a question and it presumably pulls all the information it can surrounding that question and gives you a summary. Maybe it will be good enough to give you the names of the leading researchers in that field and their theories/ work. However, how many other people does it not credit?

I suppose- let's put it this way. You come up with a totally original theory on something. You make your essay/ paper/ book available online but, for whatever reason, you don't get the credit you deserve. What if- some years later, a student is writing an essay on the subject. They use AI. It references your research without crediting you. The student copies it but this time- they do get the recognotion. They win prizes etc. How would that make you feel? Pissed off I would imagine!

Computers and AI are doing frightening things to intellectual property rights I feel. Copyright in general really. People seem to think they have the right to all things in the public domain. If possible, without paying for it too! It's an odd concept really. We wouldn't steal other things.

Plus, I imagine AI generated voices/ images are going to cause issues. It's weird to hear well known narrators- Sir David Attenborough, Sir Anthony Hopkins voicing things they likely didn't agree to- or maybe with. I wonder if they'll even receive loyalties. Can a person copyright their voice? That's a whole other issue though but, AI is going to be massively disruptive I think to many people's livelihoods.

To me- it's not that using AI would be bad in itself. It's how you use it that would determine plagarism. Are you trying to pass everything off as your own work or, are you transparent about your sources? Are you adding your own thoughts, arguments and perspectives or, are you just copying with minor adjustments?

I'm sure you can use AI and not cheat though. I imagine that's what you do do as well. Isn't it just another case of: This source says this- this source says that. These are the reasons I agree with one over the other?

I actually did terribly on my first dissertation because I didn't understand what I was supposed to do. Our dissertations felt more like a review of a subject and, other people's work. Drawing in multiple sources and references, I figured out I simply had to argue a viewpoint. I did much better when I'd figured that out.

If you're nervous though- I think you should ask your tutors about it. I imagine they'll say it's ok to use- so long as you verify sources, make it clear when you quote and, include your own arguments.

I imagine it's similar to Wikipedia in a way. Our tutors warned us off of Wiki seeing as anyone can edit it so- it's less likely all of it will be accurate. Same with AI- I'm sure it sometimes pulls up inaccurate sources. I know it does in fact. Some questions I've put to Google, it's gotten wrong!

It's a weird age in a way. Students in some ways have it easier to my generation- we mostly had to rely on books and printed publications for research. It's got to be so much easier to look online. Still- while it's quicker initially, I imagine then comes the headache of verifying what is actually fully factual.

 

[Apathy79]

As others have mentioned Grok 3 is great but Gemini Deep Research is also good and Gemini 2.5 Pro (thinking model) also good. If you sign up to ChatGPT nowadays the models have improved too. Their Deep Research with the o3 model is also quite good, although just using the o3 model generally is excellent. It's a huge improvement on o1. There is also Perplexity Deep Research which I use from time to time. I think most or all of these have free options so if you run out your allowance with 1, you just copy the conversation to another and keep going if you don't want to go paid.

 

[Higurashi415]

I never cheated in any manner in college. All my work was entirely my own, created by my own hand. Graduated with a 3.9+ GPA in engineering. Using AI is nothing more than new-age cheating.

I don't agree with this at all. Using AI is a lot more advanced than using a calculator but at the end of the day you are in fact using a calculator. I mean, it's just a tool. Old-school engineers said the same things about calculators when we moved past slide rules.

The only thing I'd say is... if AI can produce the same work you have to produce to pass exams successfully, watch out because AI has already replaced you and you're fucked.

 

[locked*n*loaded]

I don't agree with this at all. Using AI is a lot more advanced than using a calculator but at the end of the day you are in fact using a calculator. I mean, it's just a tool. Old-school engineers said the same things about calculators when we moved past slide rules.

The only thing I'd say is... if AI can produce the same work you have to produce to pass exams successfully, watch out because AI has already replaced you and you're fucked.

Well, you're entitled to think what you want, but people use AI to write term papers, solve complex math problems, even write a thesis. If the work doesn't come from you're own hand and mind, I don't see how you could think of it as anything other than cheating. Comparing a calculator and AI is like comparing apples and oranges. With a calculator, you're merely inputting numbers you already know, or have arrived at. It certainly isn't the same as telling AI to write a paper on the Napoleonic Wars and then slapping your name on the paper as if you've written it yourself.