Selecting AI Tools
What is Generative AI?
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can generate new content, such as text or images, based on the patterns it learns from existing data. Depending on the AI model or tool you are using this data can come from different places, but it is largely coming from publicly available sources like the internet, newspapers, scholarly databases, etc.
Different generative AI models or tools produce content differently and are good at different things, so deciding which tool is best for your research purposes is important! For beginners, starting with pre-trained models like ChatGPT can be advantageous. These models have already learned from vast amounts of data and can be fine-tuned for specific tasks.
For an in depth overview of what Generative AI is and how to best use it, we recommend this beginner’s guide from Generative AI expert Conor Grennan.
Suggested Tools
Here are some generative AI tools and the purposes you might use them for:
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ChatGTP
ChatGPT is a general-use chatbot that can perform a variety of functions. You can talk to it like another person and ask it to answer your questions or perform small tasks for you, so long as those tasks involve generating text. It is available in free and paid versions (the paid version is faster and can also generate images).
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Elicit
Elicit is specifically designed for use with research papers: finding relevant papers, summarizing them, and synthesizing them.
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ChatPDF
ChatPDF allows you to drag-and-drop a PDF into its website, and it will then index the PDF and try to answer your questions about it.
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Connected Papers
Connected Papers is another tool designed to help with the research process. When you give it the title of one paper, it can intelligently find similar papers and provide a visual overview of the common content.
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Research Rabbit
Research Rabbit calls itself “Spotify for papers,” meaning you can create a collection of papers, topics, authors, etc., and it will generate recommendations for you.
**Note: Most of these tools will require you to login and create an account. Some of them may ask you to pay for their services. We recommend using free tools and do not recommend using tools that require payment.
