AI for Research & Writing

AI: Your New Research Assistant

Research is time-intensive — finding sources, reading papers, analyzing data, writing, editing — every step takes hours. AI can serve as your research assistant at every stage, though it's never a substitute for your own critical thinking.

Literature Reviews

The first step in research is understanding what's already been done. Here's how AI helps:

Semantic Scholar: AI-powered academic search — finds relevant papers, shows citation graphs.
Perplexity (Academic mode): Answers research questions with citations from actual papers.
Elicit: Finds papers matching your research question and summarizes their methods and findings.
Connected Papers: Shows a visual graph of papers related to any given paper.

Document Analysis & Summarization

Reading a 50-page paper takes hours. AI can summarize it in seconds:

Claude: Upload large documents and ask specific questions — "What are the key findings?", "What methods were used?", "What are the limitations?"
NotebookLM: Upload multiple documents, ask cross-reference questions, and generate podcast-style summaries.
ChatGPT: Upload PDFs for analysis and Q&A.

AI for Writing

AI isn't a replacement for your writing — it's an editor and assistant:

First drafts: Give your ideas and key points — AI creates a structured draft.
Editing and refining: Simplify language, strengthen arguments, fix grammar.
Different perspectives: Ask "What are the counterarguments to this?" to make your writing more robust.
Translation: Write in one language, translate to another.

Ethics of AI in Research

Disclose AI use transparently.
Always verify AI-generated information.
Final judgment and decisions are your responsibility.
Follow your institution's AI use policies.

Research Prompt Examples

# Literature review assistant prompt
literature_review_prompt = """
I'm researching "the impact of climate change on agriculture 
in South Asia." Please:

1. Identify the key research areas in this field
2. Summarize what types of studies have been done in each area
3. Identify research gaps
4. Suggest potential directions for future research

Note: Do NOT cite specific papers — I will verify
using Semantic Scholar myself.
"""

# Writing editor prompt
editing_prompt = """
Edit the paragraph below:
- Simplify and clarify the language
- Identify any logical gaps
- Fix grammar and spelling
- Do NOT change my core argument
- Mark changes in [brackets]
"""

Output