What is AI?
The Basics of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to technologies that can perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as generating text, answering questions, analysing information, creating images, and supporting problem-solving.
AI is a broad field that includes technologies such as machine learning, neural networks, and natural language processing. These technologies power many of the digital tools we use every day and are increasingly being used across education, healthcare, business, and many other sectors.
In recent years, advances in generative AI have made AI more visible and accessible than ever before. Generative AI can create new content, including text, images, audio, video, and computer code in response to user prompts.
Many of the AI tools used by students today, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, and Claude, are powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). LLMs are AI systems trained on vast amounts of text, enabling them to understand and generate human-like language. This allows them to answer questions, explain concepts, summarise information, and support a wide range of learning and productivity tasks.
While these tools can be powerful and useful, they do not think, understand, or reason in the same way humans do. AI systems can make mistakes, produce inaccurate information, or reflect biases in the data on which they were trained. This means that critical thinking, human judgement, and subject knowledge remain essential.
As AI continues to evolve, having a better understanding of its capabilities, limitations and potential applications is becoming increasingly valuable.
AI in Education
As AI becomes more common in education, work, and everyday life, it is important to develop AI literacy. AI literacy is the ability to understand how AI works, use AI tools effectively, evaluate AI-generated content critically, and recognise the opportunities, limitations, and ethical considerations associated with AI.
Developing AI literacy can help you become a more confident learner, a more informed digital citizen, and a graduate who is prepared to work alongside AI technologies in a rapidly changing world. Many AI literacy frameworks describe similar core themes. Across higher education, these are often grouped into areas such as:
- Understanding AI (what it is, how it works at a high level, and where it is used),
- Using AI effectively (prompting, refining outputs, and supporting learning tasks),
- Evaluating and questioning AI (accuracy, bias, reliability, and limitations),
- Acting responsibly (ethics, academic integrity, data privacy, and wellbeing).
Rather than treating AI as a single skill, these frameworks emphasise that AI literacy is contextual: how you use AI for brainstorming ideas, supporting revision, or analysing information may differ across disciplines and types of assessment. Importantly, being AI‑literate also means recognising situations where not using AI is the most appropriate choice.
AI can support learning in many ways, from explaining difficult concepts and generating study materials to helping you organise your workload and develop ideas. However, AI works best when used as a partner in learning rather than a replacement for your own thinking, judgement, and subject knowledge.
Throughout this AI Hub, you will discover practical ways to use AI effectively, develop your AI literacy, strengthen your critical thinking skills, and make informed decisions about AI in your studies and beyond.
