# AI use and disclosure in the final project

## The rule (syllabus, verbatim)

> Because this course both studies and uses AI, we hold the line explicitly. You are encouraged to use AI tools extensively for the applied work: exploring, prototyping, debugging, building, and analyzing. All written assignments, however, must be in your own words and must reflect your own understanding. You must disclose substantive AI use in a brief AI-use note attached to the submission, crediting tools the way you would credit a collaborator. Using AI writing tools and submitting the output as your own violates the Stanford Honor Code.

Everything below is practical guidance on following that rule. If anything here seems to conflict with the syllabus, the syllabus wins.

## What that means for each part of the project

| Part of the project                                                 | AI use                           | Notes                                                                                      |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Exploring, prototyping, debugging, building, analyzing              | **Encouraged**                   | Keep control, check what it produces, and disclose                                         |
| Brainstorming and stress-testing your question, design, or argument | Allowed, disclose if substantive | The AI can suggest options; you choose. Use the prompts in the workflows                   |
| Working material: code, analyses, results memos, notes, session summaries | **Allowed**, disclose      | The AI can draft these. Check what it produces                                             |
| Finding source leads                                                | Allowed, disclose                | Verify every source yourself; see below                                                    |
| **The text you submit** (proposal, milestone, final, peer reviews)  | **Must be your own ideas**       | AI may help with preliminary and intermediate output, and it may review your draft; you are responsible for every word you submit |
| Slides and presentation practice                                    | Allowed, disclose if substantive | You deliver the talk yourself                                                              |

## Suggested practices

Three practices help you follow the rule above. We recommend them, but they're **suggestions, not requirements**. The binding rule is the syllabus policy quoted at the top.

- **Human first**: make your own first attempt before using AI (see below).
- **Peer reviews without AI**: write your reviews of classmates' work yourself, without AI help.
- **No sensitive uploads**: keep private, identifying, or confidential material, and classmates' unpublished work, out of AI tools (see Privacy below).

### Human first, then AI

1. **Pass 1, you.** Make a real first attempt in your own words: a question, a claim, an outline, a design, a draft.
2. **Pass 2, AI with control.** Then use AI to challenge, clarify, or extend it.
3. **Keep the thread.** You should always be able to say what was yours before AI, and what changed after.

This makes your disclosure easy, and it protects the learning the project is for.

## Verification (non-negotiable in practice)

- **AI invents citations.** Before any source goes into your work, check that it exists, that it's cited accurately, and that it says what you use it for.
- **AI isn't evidence.** Don't cite an AI system for facts about politics, law, policy, or public opinion, unless AI outputs are what your project studies.
- **You own the errors.** Anything under your name is your responsibility, including hallucinations you didn't catch.

## What counts as "substantive" (disclose it)

**Disclose** when AI meaningfully shaped:

- content, structure, or argument;
- analysis, code, or data;
- your evidence search;
- wording, including restyling your prose.

**No disclosure needed** for spell-check, grammar fixes, formatting, or a synonym look-up that leaves your phrasing intact.

**When in doubt, disclose.**

## AI-use note template (suggested format)

Attach this to every project submission. Any reasonable format works (a page at the end of your document, or a separate file); the template below is a suggestion.

```
AI-USE NOTE — [Proposal / Implementation milestone / Final submission]

Tools used: [e.g., model name and version, Stanford AI Playground, coding assistant]

What I used AI for:
- [Task] — [what the AI did] — [what I kept, changed, or rejected]
- [Task] — ...

What is entirely mine: [e.g., the research question, the argument, all prose in sections 1-5]

Verification: [e.g., all 12 sources checked on Google Scholar; code outputs checked against 30 hand-coded cases]

Chats/logs available on request: [yes / link]
```

**Example entry:**
"Debugging my Python scraper: Claude found the pagination bug and I used its fix (lines 40–52). I rejected its suggestion to drop incomplete records and kept them with a flag instead."

## Privacy

*Suggested practice.* Don't paste private, confidential, identifying, or copyrighted material into AI tools. That includes raw interview notes, non-anonymized data, and classmates' unpublished work.

## Access

Students have access to a frontier AI model through Stanford. The Stanford AI Playground is also available. If cost or access is ever a barrier for a particular task, contact the teaching staff.

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*Sources: POLISCI 158 syllabus ("Generative AI", "Academic Integrity", "Course Requirements"), quoted verbatim where marked.*