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I feel strongly about not using generative AI in writing my thesis. Therefore, I would like to add a statement to my thesis making it crystal clear that generative AI was not used in any form.

Understandably, some readers of this question might have an issue with this post, thinking that we shouldn't need to include statements like this since graduate students are not supposed to be using AI in their writing in the first place. So, the whole idea might sound a bit illogical and strange.

What section of a thesis would you suggest to be used for a statement like this?

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    What problem are you trying to solve by including such a statement? Commented yesterday
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    Would you also consider including a statement that no animals were harmed during the writing of your thesis? If not, why the AI thing then? Commented yesterday
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    @N.I. Right, and my point was, that in some sciences, you do positively claim to have followed sets of ethical standards. Commented 21 hours ago
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    @N.I. Sorry, but I can’t help see your question as being purposely obtuse. Dealing with animal testing isn’t something likely to happen in writing a CS thesis, and in fact in many fields. Dealing with GenAI instead is. What exactly is your point aside from some sort of "gotcha"? Commented 21 hours ago
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    So if there was no use of any sort of generative AI, does that also mean that no built-in spell check in the text editor was used (which generates suggestions for what you meant when it spots a possible typo)? Commented 18 hours ago

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You can state this in one of the preamble pages of your thesis

I don't think there's anything wrong with this, and you can declare it as something that is not a big deal, and explain your reasoning for mentioning it. It is your thesis, so you have latitude to do it the way you want. Pick a spot in the preamble pages of your thesis and put in the declaration you want - something simple that tells the reader the context (people currently using AI), your view on this (you're against it), and then the resulting declaration (you didn't use it). Something broadly like this might suffice:

The author notes that some researchers/writers presently use generative AI to assist them in their research and writing. The present author is a sceptic of such practices and considers them to detract from learning and from expressing ideas in one's own words. Thus, for whatever it's worth, the author declares that he has not used generative AI in any part of this work.

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    New boilerplate disclaimer obtained. Commented 20 hours ago
  • It is also helpful to keep a version history of the draft, to later use as evidence in case someone accuses OP of using gen.AI ... while it should be the accuser's burden of proof to present their claim, we all know that everyone throws the first stone. Commented 20 hours ago
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    Not really sure it's necessary to include the first sentence, or the second really (other than "is a skeptic"), or assume the author is a man. Commented 20 hours ago
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    From a number of writing cues in the question, I am confident in my inference that questioner is a man (with high probability). Commented 13 hours ago
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    Thank you #Ben for sharing your insight and taking the time to write the statement. I will include a statement like this: "Following my personal belief that generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools should not be used in academic writing, I made sure this is also the case in this thesis. The text included in this document is either written by me or a paraphrase of the text in cited literature. Although AI is part of the focus in this thesis, no part of this thesis is, in any way, created using AI tools." Commented 11 hours ago
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I would just make it a footnote in an introduction or in a concluding section. A single sentence in the conclusion would also seem to be fine.

And I agree that it is currently valuable to say such things.

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    Thanks. Ironically, the focus of my thesis is on solving some inverse problems in Electromagnetics using some Convolutional Neural Network (AI) architechtures. Commented yesterday
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    Why should an extra line of text, that can be AI generated, be valuable? Either the thesis is or isn't. The sentence alone is not doing anything. Trust me, bro ;-) Commented yesterday
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    @AnoE, because, at this time, "AI" is wildly inconsistent and unreliable. A statement could assure readers that, if they accept the statement, don't need to explore AI driven inconsistencies and errors. AI as it currently exists lacks intelligence. It is misnamed. Taking shortcuts in research is one thing, but unreliable shortcuts is something else entirely. (Computer Science professor, retired, and Mathematician) Commented yesterday
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    "No AI was used" may be a high-value fact (if true), but it's an extremely low-value assertion. It provides a small platform for the author to make clear their position on that current topic, like saying "none of this writing took place on stolen land". And I suppose it might marginally increase the potential cost if the author is proven to have used AI. But it doesn't provide the reader any information directly germane to the thesis itself, and it doesn't demonstrate the truth of its own assertion. Commented 23 hours ago
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    @JayMcEh "doesn't demonstrate the truth of its own assertion" - in the sciences, you, at some point, have to take authors at their word, because you cannot prove that they "recruited by email" or did measurement X they way they claim. If this was the bar to include a statement in a thesis, my dissertation would have been very short indeed. Commented 21 hours ago
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Ask your institution

The use of AI is an ongoing topic of discussion in many academic institutions. Whether or not, you should include a statement on your own, has been addressed by others; but I think you could also ask for guidance at your institution.

While asking your advisor is the natural thing to do for many students, I think this might warrant asking higher up.

I have noticed, that some institutions are now including statements about the use of gen AI in their sworn declarations of their theses. Note, I am from central Europe, so what I am writing about might not apply, or even be unheard of where you are.

In one instance, the institution requires its students to highlight all uses of gen AI, such as you would highlight quotations from other works, as well as providing all the prompts which led to the included work of gen AI.

So, if there is already some institutional way of dealing with AI, you might get an answer. If there is not, you maybe can serve to kick-off the discussion at your institution on how to deal with AI, especially gen AI, in the context of writing theses.

After all, as with any aids, there are legitimate uses of AI in academic writing and there are illegitimate uses.

What is a sworn declaration?

The author of the thesis, i.e., the student, officially declares that he or she is the sole author of the manuscript, and has followed all existing guidelines for proper scientific conduct and has used no forbidden aids.

The exact language varies from institution to institution, but some form of such a declaration is quite common where I am from.

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    Back when I handed in my thesis, I changed the clunky wording of that declaration. Nearly had to reprint and bind everything, because that was not allowed. It had to be the exact wording down to the comma that was given by the institution. So, yes, ask your institution. Commented yesterday
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    @pyrochlor My experience (in the UK) was the opposite: the wording of the declaration was up to me (after all, different people would need to say different things depending on the amount of collaborative work involved). So I could have mentioned that no AI was used (if it was a thing back then), no kittens were harmed, etc. Commented yesterday
  • @pyrochlor: That is irrelevant. You follow the rules of your institution, but you can very well put other assertions elsewhere in your thesis. The question asked here did not ask about changing some official declaration; it in fact asked where to put the extra assertion. Commented 1 hour ago
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In a thesis one should avoid waving any unnecessary red flags. I am pretty sure that this is not one, but you never know. A committee member looking to make trouble (or maybe just having a hard time coming up with questions) might ask whether OP had used Google? And when? Doesn't Google use AI? Etc.

Maybe the best place would be in the acknowledgements, because (1) nobody much cares what is in there (2) often it isn't included in the version sent to the committee, and (3) this is a sort of an acknowledgement, actually a non-acknowledgement.

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  • "Waving an unnecessary red flag" sums up the challenge. It makes sense to include such a statement in the acknowledgement section. Commented yesterday
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    I don't see why this would be a red flag of any sort. These days, thesis committees are aware that AI is commonly used, whether it is stated or not. Commented yesterday
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    Also, I think quite a few people pay particular attention to the acknowledgements. Don't you? Commented yesterday
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    Since the whole point of this is to make a strong, clear statement, hiding it in a section nobody cares about seems counter productive. Commented yesterday
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    It's a bit like when in a job posting one of the listed benefits is "payment on time". Commented yesterday
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It is pointless to gratuitously declare that you have not committed misconduct or dishonest acts, in your thesis or elsewhere. In professional circles people just don’t go around doing that; the default assumption is that everyone is honest, and no one feels a need to make any declarations to that effect if they are not formally required to.

It’s also understood in professional circles that dishonest people don’t go around declaring their dishonesty, and that such people are occasionally even known to lie(!) and claim that they are honest when they’re not.

For those reasons, making an unprompted, context-free declaration that you are an honest person (or honest in some specific way you want to emphasize) does not actually make people think you are less likely to be dishonest than any other person who has not made such a declaration. In other words, it conveys no useful information.

At the same time, people who read your statement may still make some assumptions about you - rightly or wrongly - based on your affirmation of honesty. For example, they may assume:

  1. That you came from a background where so many people are dishonest that it is expected that genuinely honest people need to constantly be disavowing dishonest behavior to be taken seriously. (Of course, in such environments the dishonest people typically quickly adopt the same behavior themselves, with the result being that everyone ends up wasting a lot of energy claiming that they’re honest without conveying any useful information.)
  2. That you are an overzealous person who is fanatical about maintaining an extreme level of honesty and the appearance of honesty.
  3. That you may actually be a person with a tendency for dishonesty who is trying to mask this trait by preemptively claiming to be honest. (E.g., you actually did use AI in your thesis and are inserting the comment to start laying out your defense should anyone accuse you later of using AI.)
  4. That you are genuinely what you present yourself as, namely an ordinary honest person who just felt it was a good idea to put the statement in the thesis.
  5. Etc - people make all sorts of weird assumptions, some more logical, others less so.

I understand you want to achieve the effect of assumption 4 in this list, but unfortunately you have no control over the outcome, and some people may jump to the other, less flattering, conclusions…

Hope this helps, and congratulations on your thesis!

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    Having a statement "to gratuitously declare that you have not committed misconduct or dishonest acts" is actually formally required in my neck of the woods, at least for some specific acts. Extending the list of these acts or adding a second such statement to include something that formal processes had little time to catch up with would not be completely unprompted or context-free. Commented yesterday
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    To be honest: If you are not graduating in law or similar, adding extra legalese overhead to a thesis would form an unfavorable prejudice in my mind. Sounds like someone hard to work with. Maybe not fair. Commented yesterday
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    Re 3: "The [candidate] doth protest too much, methinks." --- Prof. Q. Gertrude, University of Elsinore. Commented yesterday
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    Using AI for writing text is not universally understood as misconduct or dishonesty - unless the university rules says so, you could use LLMs and still follow all the rules. I'd say that being explicit that the manuscript does not contain any random word salad emitted by an LLM makes perfect sense nowadays, especially if the author also thinks that using good resources instead of mashing some words together makes their thesis better. Commented yesterday
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    6. That this is a statement imposed by the university. In this case it isn't, but that's where I would ultimately land if I saw it. And the number of people who could or would check up on that is basically nil Commented 22 hours ago

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