In the context of agricultural science, the academic writing is of great importance, as articles of academicians and scientists make available all their developments available for studying the experiences around the world. This contributes not only to the exchange of experience, but also to expand the practical knowledge in agrarian topics to different continents and countries, spreading the developments of economical agriculture for solving problems with food on a global scale. Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence in the field of agrarian academic writing can be as positive results, so has risks of incorrect research of certain issues. This chapter sets itself the goal of considering the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence tools in academic writing with an agronomic focus, taking into account the specifics of the basic concept of academic writing and new artificial intelligence tools. The novelty of this work lies in the fact that developments of Ukrainian scientists can serve as interesting theoretical material for foreign colleagues.
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Academic writing is a traditional type of language competence, which in our rapidly developing century has become especially relevant due to the global development of science and international academic relations. As Ukraine is one of the most agronomical developed countries, agrarian science constantly provides its achievements to the world community not only in the form of innovations in agricultural products but also a description of its scientific achievements, experiences and developments. As a result, the progress and improvement of academic writing with an agronomic focus occurs. In particular, students are trained to write scientific works on agricultural specialities not only in their native language but also in a foreign language in the course “Foreign Language for Professional Orientation.” They learn to read, understand, format and structure their work to present it at student scientific conferences and publish in collections of articles. For international student conferences, works with agronomic focus are written in English. Thus, practical knowledge of academic writing is the most important factor for successful studies at an agricultural university. The appearance of artificial intelligence in our reality has become a breakthrough in all areas of human knowledge, naturally affecting scientific writing. The advantages and disadvantages of using artificial intelligence in academic writing with an agronomic focus will be discussed in this chapter.
At the beginning of 2023, a huge event happened - this was the spread of information about the ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool, the release of which took place back in November 2022. University education faced the threat of the actual disappearance of such types of works as essays, abstracts, and even diploma and master's theses and dissertations (Ostapovych, 2023; Soroka, 2023; Balyk & Shmyger, 2023). ChatGPT is a chatbot with artificial intelligence that can work with text, create images, work with formulas and tables - and generate everything it is asked. Therefore, the possibilities for its use are practically limitless, the chatbot is capable of simplifying the work and increasing the efficiency of employees in almost any field of human activity. As scientists write (Ostapovych, 2023), the use of machine learning algorithms to analyze the entered text and generate answers that are designed to imitate human conversation allows to use this chatbot for anything, even answering notes, providing information, communicating with various languages, means of conversation. There is a need to observe the ethical principles of higher education and academic integrity in the scientific community and among students (Ostapovych, 2023, p. 201). Artificial intelligence has many definitions (Khoroshaylo, & Kochergina, 2023); Gureeva (2021). If to summarize these definitions, it would be that artificial intelligence is a broad term used to describe a set of technologies that can solve and perform tasks to achieve any goals without human guidance. There was a need to support artificial intelligence in the higher education system of Ukraine to make universities better adapted to the needs of modern society. This is especially relevant for agronomic science, which is constantly developing and needs a description of its activities.
The purpose of this chapter is a theoretical description of the possibilities of using artificial intelligence tools in agricultural academic writing.
The following tasks are set during the study:
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generalization of information about the possibilities of using artificial intelligence in the field of agricultural science, education and teaching based on modern scientific literature;
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to highlight the main directions for the development of writing skills for further application in professional activities based on existing programs and scientific sources;
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consideration of the scope of application of existing knowledge for agricultural universities, as well as highlighting the problems, advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence in the field of academic writing in agriculture.