so can AI do research for you now in the past chat GPT has really struggled because it doesn't have internet access they gave it to us for a little bit and then they took it away how dare they now there's a load of other services that have come out that could potentially fill that Gap and they are promising academic research let's have a look what they mean so this is what gpt4 is doing at the moment on chat GPT I have essentially just said find the current state of organic photovoltaic devices in the academic literature now I know full well it doesn't have access to the internet it used to and it used to also provide links let's see what it gave us so it just said as of my knowledge cut off yes yes yes we know here are the advancements and key trends okay great it's just sort of like generic stuff that's not really useful for anyone who's doing academic research and then I came across silatus or silatus I don't understand why it's so ambiguous the name but it says here let AI conduct your research and I was like yeah whatever it's just going to be like normal boring research but no it says academic research really solatus or sillitis can you do academic research like me a PhD trained scientist let's have a look you can see here that you end up with kind of this interface once you log in I'm on a free trial at the moment but essentially there's these options you get General and academic academic yes and here we've got fast and precise as well now you type in your thing there you push go and it takes about sort of like six to ten minutes as far as I could tell now I've done this previously and you can see here I typed in exactly the same prompt which was what is the current state of organic photovoltaic devices and I wanted to go away and have a look at the field so it had a look at all of these different sources this one this one this one will take a little bit to see what age the papers are this was 2019 so yeah whatever 2019 is that the latest oh 14.7 efficiency let's have a little bit of a look 2019. okay so overall it's not really giving us like the amazingly um up-to-date stuff but is there a better one stay around because I think there is let's carry on to see what happens so after giving me all of these pub.acs.org so that's why they all are I mean this one's um RSC uh as ACS and then it gives us this kind of like summary document at the end which I kind of like so let's open this up and have a look it says uh your input is what is the current state of organic photovolidate devices in the academic literature that bit's very important so here it gives us the factors the strategies for improving recent developments and then it gives us this a simple rundown of each individual source that it finds so here it's got contacts contacts contacts context and then the sources at the bottom so is this academic level research I don't think so um overall sell itus yeah you've done an okay job I wouldn't pay for this for academic research though even though it says it can do academic research there are better ones let's check out those the next one you need to know about is ayomni Omni why why are the names so difficult and here you can see you've got your business intelligent uh sidekick but essentially you then you'd end up with autonomous market research and that's essentially what we're doing so I can click on this research button at the top here and you can see I've asked yesterday what is the current state of organic photovoltaic devices in the academic literature let's click on that to see what it came up with now the one thing I really like about this is that it really understood the brief if I click on these we can see that this is a 2022 paper much better better than the thing that sort of like said it would do academic research but essentially you can get a look to see its internal monologue and I like the fact you can kind of see the the wheels turning as it's sort of like looking at things so here it says I'm looking for the latest advancements then I'm looking for the current challenges then I'm looking at the efficiency rates so it's decided that it's got all of these subtasks that it needs to do now do you remember agents do you remember AI agents these sort of like little Bots that go into the world and find information for you this is what it is it is improved significantly and dramatically over the past sort of like few months and here we can see that it's looked at materials as well it's looked at potential applications and it's given us in my opinion a much better summary of the current literature than salacious or syllitus or however you say that I've kind of Forgotten but here we've got key takeaways and we've got the introduction we've got efficiency rates which is up to date we've got materials and device architecture stability ability and lifetime manufacturing commercialization conclusions and the one thing I like about this as far as I could tell it was free I didn't pay for anything staying in the world of AI agents I.E little Bots that go out into the world to find out that information you're searching for there is this service called cognosis much easier to say I like that one but essentially once you're logged in there's a free version as well where you get a certain number of bonus credits you can actually then go to see what agents you've looked at in the past and yesterday I did exactly the same prompt to cognosis so here I can click and we can see that it was using the GPT 3.5 model so if you pay for this I reckon it could get even better but essentially it's gone through the literature and the one thing I love it doesn't just stick into one like ecosystem it's actually found papers from a multitude of different sources and it's giving me a rundown of what it's found a rundown of what it's found here it's used two articles but the one thing that I really like about it if you click on here it opens up where you get the information so here it's a 2023 paper there we go oh my God 2023 and it says advances in organic photovoltaic sales are comprehensive review so it's giving me exactly what I wanted which was an up-to-date review of the current state of organic photovoltaic devices so I think that cognosis even though it's delivered only two papers it's actually sort of like fulfilled the requirement of the prompt which is the latest advancements and I'm not saying that this will replace a literature review search or that it will sort of like be able to produce stuff you'll be able to copy and paste into your thesis or wherever it is not going to be able to do that and to be honest with you I have seen the AI agent world come into its own over the last few months and I'm pretty excited of how well it is performing now and where it's going to go in the future so check out these agents and these research tools for your research field let me know in in the comments if they work for you it's free to give it a go you get a free trial with some of them and it could really save you hours and hours of work people get a little bit annoyed when I talk about AI tools but essentially here we're not saying that these AI tools do everything for you and you can just copy and paste into your paper thesis or wherever you still have to do the sort of like critical thinking because the AI cannot do that it does not have an intuition that you build up as a scientist and a researcher for example when you read a paper once you've built up that intuition of what a field is like um what the sort of like Leading Edge of ideas and Discovery you start to have this kind of like sort of like sensor and you can be okay like this is not really fitting in with what I'm reading at the moment or you can say okay this is a bit of a rubbish paper it doesn't really give me anything new see you later that still exists that still has to happen and it should happen for every everything you read and you want to cite in your thesis your paper or wherever you're writing but it does not mean that you cannot use awesome tools that are coming out and getting better by the day and it's important you stay up to date so just subscribe to this Channel and I'll do my best to keep you up to date of the best tools for certain activities in the academic realm easy that's a good deal in it so there we have it there's everything you need to know about the current state of AI tools for doing academic research remember it's not research really it's just mining the internet and the world for different sources related to your research you still need the critical thinking you still need to sort of like build up that intuition around your field but this makes it a little bit easier to put those feelers out and grab some stuff and it's a great first touch point for a lot of researchers if they're entering a new field or they just need to grab that little bit of information from somewhere so let me know in the comments what you think and remember there are more ways that you can engage with me first of all you should sign up to my newsletter head over to Andrew stapton.com newsletter the link is in the description and when you sign up you'll get five emails over about two weeks everything from the tools I've used the podcast I've been on how to write the perfect abstract and more it's exclusive content available for free so go sign up now and also go check out academiainsider.com that's my new project where I've got my ebooks my resource packs the blog The Forum everything's over there to make sure that Academia and your PhD works for you alright then I'll see you in the next video
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