What is an AI Research Tool?
An AI research tool "leverages artificial intelligence to assist researchers in various aspects of their work. These tools can automate data analysis, enhance literature reviews, generate insights, and streamline research." So instead of creating content, a research tool helps you find things.
What it is not
It is important to distinguish between AI research tools and tools which use AI under the hood, but are still entirely user-driven. The former automate various parts of the research process, but the latter work the way any search engine does. Compare for example, Semantic Scholar to Research Rabbit or Litmaps .
The line is not always clear, however. For example Scinapse offers a basic search functionality, but more advanced features in its subscription plan. Likewise one search engine, DuckDuckGo, recently rolled out an AI chat feature with "anonymous access to popular AI models, including GPT-4o mini, Claude 3, and open-source Llama 3.1 and Mixtral." Additionally many of these tools utilize similar technology - large language models - under the hood. However it is often implemented differently. Just compare the results when one asks ChatGPT how many rats are in New York City vs the same question posed to a dedicate research tool called Scite.
Benefits and Drawbacks
There are many advantages to using AI research tools. They reduce or eliminate the need to wade through large numbers of search results. AI research tools also allow you to process large amounts of data. Some can analyze text through something known as natural language processing (NLP). AI research tools may also collaboration between team members.
However many of the same caveats of AI in general apply. AI research tools can make things up ("hallucinate") and contain biases. There are privacy concerns and cost issues as many AI tools are not entirely free.Above all remember an AI research tool is no substitute for you own insight and understanding of the topic. It can facilitate research, but cannot think for you.
Made by Anthropic, Claude is billed as "a next generation AI assistant built for work and trained to be safe, accurate, and secure." It uses Anthropic's Constitutional AI and is capable of advanced reasoning, vision analysis, generating code (HTML, etc.) and translation between multiple languages.
Paid or free: Has both free and paid tiers - https://claude.ai/login?returnTo=%2F%3F#pricing
URL: https://claude.ai
Consensus is an academic search engine powered by AI. It provides traditional search engine functionality as well as the ability to synthesize findings. It also has a "Copilot" feature which will provide more in-depth analysis.
Paid or free: Consensus includes unlimited searching in their free tier, but only limited access to summaries and Copilot. - https://consensus.app/home/pricing
Made in the same mold as websites such as Connected Papers, Inciteful allows users to create network graphs of related papers. Inciteful is noteworthy for its developer's commitment to making the service available for free. However, it must be noted, Inciteful is "still under active development" and is "pretty expensive to keep the site up and running". So one should expect the site and its operating model to change in the future.
Paid or Free: Free
Similar to Connected Papers, Litmaps creates a visual graph of related papers. You start by entering searching for a single paper upon which the system builds the graph. According to their website "Litmaps simplifies the entire literature review process by helping you to quickly find the most important papers and understand the big picture in no time."
Paid or Free: Litmaps has a free tier which allows up to 20 basic search inputs and 2 Litmaps of 100 articles each per month. Unlimited usage requires a subscription. - https://www.litmaps.com/pricing
A Discovery app which unlocks a completely novel way to search for papers and authors, monitor new literature, visualize research landscapes, and collaborate with colleagues.
Paid or free: Free to use
Connected Papers is a visual tool which allows researchers to find and explore papers relevant to their work. To use it, enter the title of a paper into the search bar. The system will create a graph with papers arranged according to their similarity.
Paid or free: Free tier with up to five graphs per month. Unlimited graphs require a paid subscription, but discounted pricing for academic users is available. - https://www.connectedpapers.com/pricing
Advertised as an AI research assistant which advertises the ability to reduce research time by summarizing papers, extracting data and synthesizing findings.
Paid or free: Has both a free and a paid tier. See pricing page for more information.
URL: https://elicit.com
Perplexity is an AI-powered discovery tool. It can summarize content, answer questions and explore topics. One of its signature features is a "Pro Search". It is more in-depth than a standard quick search and "conducts thorough research to provide in-depth, accurate responses to your questions."
Paid or Free: Perplexity has a free tier which includes unlimited quick searches and 5 Pro searches. For access to more Pro searches (up to 300 per day) one must subscribe for $20 per month or $200 per year. Unfortunately this information is not readily available on their website, but I was able to ask Perplexity itself how much it cost and it returned some information.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. Scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health. It claims to have the world's largest citation statement database formed "by continually monitoring 200 million scholarly sources and analyzing 1.2B+ citations"
Paid or free: Paid plan only, $20 per month - https://scite.ai/pricing
URL: https://scite.ai
Bibliography
"12 AI Research Tools to Drive Knowledge Exploration." Digital Ocean. Accessed October 8, 2024. https://www.digitalocean.com/resources/articles/ai-research-tools#what-is-an-ai-research-tool .
"Generative Artificial Intelligence." Wikipedia. Accessed October 8, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence
