Use of AI Tools for Course Assignments, Theses, Research Papers, and PhD Dissertations

Prof. Dr. Volker Markl
Chair of Database Systems and Information Management (DIMA)
Technische Universität Berlin

June 7, 2023

Policy Statement. 

1. Effective immediately, as a general policy, we do not permit the use of ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs) in DIMA for the preparation of research papers, technical reports, theses, PhD dissertations, or any other original work. 

2. The use of LLMs shall be strictly prohibited, as it on the one hand might prevent a fair grading of student performance, and on the other hand present the very serious risk of plagiarism. Similar to copying code from Stack Overflow, there is a spectrum with respect to when plagiarism occurs. However, in the scientific world one should be particularly aware and be careful with respect to this.

3. Every DIMA member should be aware of this policy and also point this out to your students and mentees. For course/project reports and theses, we will require students to sign a form that they confirm that they did not use any LLM tools, such as ChatGPT for the writing of their theses. Of course, this also applies to research papers and PhD dissertations.

4. Please be mindful of this matter and bring any violations of this policy to my attention, so that DIMA will be an environment free of the risk of plagiarism.

Download the document here.