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The best AI tools to power your

academic research

These AI tools could help boost your academic research - Copyright

! Euronews/Canva "
By Camille Bello • 08/05/2023 , 14/09

The future of academia is likely to be

transformed by AI language models such as
ChatGPT. Here are some other tools worth
knowing about.

"ChatGPT will redefine the future of academic

research. But most academics don't know how to use
it intelligently," Mushtaq Bilal, a postdoctoral
researcher at the University of Southern Denmark,
recently tweeted.

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Academia and artificial intelligence FAIH are becoming

increasingly intertwined, and as AI continues to
advance, it is likely that academics will continue to
either embrace its potential or voice concerns about
its risks.

"There are two camps in academia. The first is the

early adopters of artificial intelligence, and the second
is the professors and academics who think AI corrupts
academic integrity," Bilal told Euronews Next.

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He places himself firmly in the first camp.

The Pakistani-born and Denmark-based professor

believes that if used thoughtfully, AI language models
could help democratise education and even give way
to more knowledge.

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Many experts have pointed out that the accuracy and

quality of the output produced by language models
such as ChatGPT are not trustworthy. The generated
text can sometimes be biased, limited or inaccurate.

But Bilal says that understanding those limitations,

paired with the right approach, can make language
models “do a lot of quality labour for you,” notably for
academia.

Incremental prompting to create a

'structure'

To create an academia-worthy structure, Bilal says it is

fundamental to master incremental prompting, a
technique traditionally used in behavioural therapy
and special education.

It involves breaking down complex tasks into smaller,

more manageable steps and providing prompts or
cues to help the individual complete each one
successfully. The prompts then gradually become
more complicated.

In behavioural therapy, incremental prompting allows

individuals to build their sense of confidence. In
language models, it allows for “way more
sophisticated answers”.

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In a Twitter thread, Bilal showed how he managed to

get ChatGPT to provide a “brilliant outline” for a journal
article using incremental prompting.

In his demonstration, Bilal started by asking ChatGPT

about specific concepts relevant to his work, then
about authors and their ideas, guiding the AI-driven
chatbot through the contextual knowledge pertinent
to his essay.

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“Now that ChatGPT has a fair idea about my project, I

ask it to create an outline for a journal article,” he
explained, before declaring the results he obtained
would likely save him “20 hours of labour”.

“If I just wrote a paragraph for every point in the

outline, I'd have a decent first draft of my article”.

Mushtaq Bilal, PhD

@MushtaqBilalPhD · Follow

ChatGPT will redefine the future of

academic research.

But most academics don't know

how to use it intelligently.

Here's how to use ChatGPT

smartly to supercharge your
research:
7:46 AM · Mar 27, 2023

Read the full conversation on Twitter

8.6K Reply Share

Read 108 replies

Incremental prompting also allows ChatGPT and other

AI models to help when it comes to "making education
more democratic," Bilal said.

Some people have the luxury of discussing with

Harvard or Oxford professors potential academic
outlines or angles for scientific papers, "but not
everyone does," he explained.

"If I were in Pakistan, I would not have access to

Harvard professors but I would still need to brainstorm
ideas. So instead, I could use AI apps to have an
intelligent conversation and help me formulate my
research".

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Bilal recently made ChatGPT think and talk like a

Stanford professor. Then, to fact-check how authentic
the output was, he asked the same questions to a
real-life Stanford professor. The results were
astonishing.

Mushtaq Bilal, PhD

@MushtaqBilalPhD · Follow

How I trained ChatGPT to think like

a Stanford professor:
6:43 AM · Mar 24, 2023

Read the full conversation on Twitter

3.4K Reply Share

Read 83 replies

ChatGPT is only one of the many AI-powered apps

you can use for academic writing, or to mimic
conversations with renowned academics.

Here are other AI-driven software to help

your academic efforts, handpicked by Bilal.

1. Consensus

In Bilal’s words: “If ChatGPT and Google Scholar got

married, their child would be Consensus — an AIY
powered search engine”.

Consensus looks like most search engines but what

sets it apart is that you ask Yes/No questions, to
which it provides answers with the consensus of the
academic community.

Mushtaq Bilal, PhD

@MushtaqBilalPhD · Follow

If ChatGPT and Google Scholar got

married, their child would be
Consensus — an AI-powered
search engine.

Here's how to use it:

11:57 AM · Mar 2, 2023

Read the full conversation on Twitter

5.3K Reply Share

Read 55 replies

Users can also ask Consensus about the relationship

between concepts and about something’s cause and
effect. For example: Does immigration improve the
economy?

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Consensus would reply to that question by stating

that most studies have found that immigration
generally improves the economy, while also providing
a list of the academic papers it used to arrive at the
consensus, and ultimately sharing the summaries of
the top articles it analysed.

The AI-powered search engine is only equipped to

respond on six topics: economics, sleep, social policy,
medicine, and mental health and health supplements.

2. Elicit.org

Elicit, "the AI research assistant" according to its

founders, also uses language models to answer
questions, but its knowledge is solely based on
research, enabling "intelligent conversations" and
brainstorming with a very knowledgeable and verified
source.

The software can also find relevant papers without

perfect keyword matches, summarise them and
extract key information.

3. Scite.ai

Although language models like ChatGPT are not

designed to intentionally deceive, it has been proven
they can generate text that is not based on factual
information, and include fake citations to papers that
don't exist.

But there is an AI-powered app that gives you real

citations to actually published papers Y Scite.

“This is one of my favourite ones to improve

workflows,” said Bilal.

Similar to Elicit, upon being asked a question, Scite

delivers answers with a detailed list of all the papers
cited in the response.

“Also, if I make a claim and that claim has been refuted

or corroborated by various people or various journals,
Scite gives me the exact number. So this is really very,
very powerful”.

“If I were to teach any seminar on writing, I would

teach how to use this app”.

Mushtaq Bilal, PhD

@MushtaqBilalPhD · Follow

It's easy to find out how many

times a given research paper has
been cited.

The real challenge is to determine

whether the citations support or
refute the author's claims.

Scite is a powerful AI app that

helps you figure it out — in minutes!

Here's how to use it:

7:45 AM · Jan 6, 2023

Read the full conversation on Twitter

1.5K Reply Share

Read 50 replies

4. Research Rabbit

“Research Rabbit is an incredible tool that FASTY

TRACKS your research. Best part: it's FREE. But most
academics don't know about it,” tweeted Bilal.

Called by its founders "the Spotify of research,"

Research Rabbit allows adding academic papers to
"collections".

These collections allow the software to learn about

the user’s interests, prompting new relevant
recommendations.

Research Rabbit also allows visualising the scholarly

network of papers and co-authorships in graphs, so
that users can follow the work of a single topic or
author and dive deeper into their research.

!" ChatPDF

ChatPDF is an AI-powered app that makes reading

and analysing journal articles easier and faster.

“It's like ChatGPT, but for research papers,” said Bilal.

Users start by uploading the research paper PDF into

the AI software and then start asking it questions.

The app then prepares a short summary of the paper

and provides the user with examples of questions that
it could answer based on the full article.

What promise does AI hold for the future of

research?

The development of AI will be as fundamental “as the

creation of the microprocessor, the personal
computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone,” wrote
Bill Gates in the latest post on his personal blog, titled
‘The Age of AI Has Begun’.

“Computers haven’t had the effect on education that

many of us in the industry have hoped,” he wrote.

"But I think in the next five to 10 years, AI-driven

software will finally deliver on the promise of
revolutionising the way people teach and learn”.

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