24 Mar
2025
24 Mar
'25
11:03 a.m.
Thank you both, really useful.
I agree with ChatGPT being very unreliable with the truth
Have you come across scite? It’s supposed to be powerful in the domain of literature
reviews.
Best,
Till
On 21 Mar 2025, at 14:50, Stewart Robertson <stewart.robertson(a)stir.ac.uk> wrote:
Afternoon Folks and happy Friday,
Just a brief AI update following our last session in November and ahead of any potential
future AI lab session - things have moved on considerably. Here are my thoughts on current
AI tools I've been dabbling with, along with my personal opinions. I'm happy to
demonstrate any of these at a future lab meeting if there's interest.
ClaudeAI<https://claude.ai/new>
This is my default all-purpose general AI tool for everyday use. It has limitations
regarding context window (the amount of PDF and other attachments you can feed it),
however, I have the paid version of Claude and consider it the best tool for most of my AI
tasks. It became even better a few months ago with the launch of Claude 3.7 Sonnet. I use
it for:
* Brainstorming and developing ideas - recently I've been using it to help develop
vignettes I'm working on
* Data analytics - feed it a CSV file and it will help analyse and develop the data,
including adding new datapoints. I was working on presenting case studies relating to
global corporate failures - it took the CSV file and was able to add extra data points
like Country of Origin, Date/Year and highlight key words
* Summarising information - you can get it to highlight key words in text and use
colour coding to apply different types of sentiment. I did this recently for a data table
of 10 cases of firms and individuals receiving regulatory fines - Claude highlighted key
words and used colour coding to categorise different types of failure causes (e.g., Audit,
Governance, Culture, Fraud, etc.)
* Generating interactive HTML visuals from any PDF
* Creating data tables from a PDF and getting Claude to data-scrape for you to create
a dataset
* Converting a PDF into a Word Document
* Coding - this is by far the best coding co-pilot for any language, in my opinion!
🙂
* Processing transcripts - either from Teams recordings or YouTube videos - it does a
fantastic job of creating useful notes/summaries. It doesn't matter if the
transcription failed - for some reason Claude is able to cope with mistranscriptions
NotebookLM<https://notebooklm.google.com/>
* Free version is excellent - up to 50 sources
* Best tool by far for analysing multiple sources relating to any subject you're
interested in - from PDFs to YouTube videos to basically any attachment you can think of
* This tool is the best at controlling and managing so-called
'hallucinations'
* Great tool for learning - now you can interact with the audio/podcast that it
generates
* This week, they introduced a new mind-map feature which I love - I created one on
'Fraud, Behaviour and Deception' which turned out fantastically. Unfortunately, it
doesn't allow you to share the output yet, but I'm happy to demonstrate this (can
be saved as a picture file though)
Non academic 'Deep Research'
ChatGPT<https://chatgpt.com/>
* ChatGPT - Deep Research Mode (I've been running this using the o1 model and NOT
the default model)
* I've been using this tool at work and was impressed
* It can access Google Scholar and academic sources but doesn't do a great job
academically due to all the paywalls that their agents can't bypass
* Good for sentiment analysis based on recent media stories - you can instruct it to
look at Reddit and other forums too
* You need the paid version to access this - and due to the processing resources
required, they have limited Plus users to 10 reports per billing period, so use them
wisely
Gemini (Google)<https://gemini.google.com/>
* FREE!
* Gemini was the first to introduce this - more recently they have enhanced its
capabilities by using Gemini 2.0 (previously used 1.5)
* Similar usage to ChatGPT - although Gemini was not nearly as good as ChatGPT on
this. That said, I HAVE NOT tried it since it has been updated with their best LLM model,
so expectations are that it should be significantly better
Academic 'Deep Research'
*
Elicit<https://elicit.com/> - IT'S DEAR at $49 a month...
@Liz<mailto:e.h.barker@stir.ac.uk> has also been dabbling with this tool as well. I
upgraded briefly to try it out but quickly cancelled my subscription. Worth watching
this video which outline how it does deep research and automated systematic reviews.
Elicit Reports — Deep Research for actual
researchers<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlJ38QMg8vs&t=235s>
I think this will get cheaper, but my advice would be to only use this if you have a
specific and precise idea of what you want to get out of it. You can essentially give it
your research question, and then it helps you refine various parameters for it to focus on
when generating the report. You can see the one I generated on whistleblowing
here<https://stir-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/r/personal/str4_stir_ac_uk/Docum…p;e=vNoQFY>.
*
Scispace<https://scispace.com/> - alternative to Elicit - this MAY be much better
than Elicit but I don't know - I haven't tried this one, but it can do similar
things to Elicit (and more by the looks of things)
*
Research Rabbit<https://www.researchrabbit.ai/> - A tool for visualising connections
between academic papers and researchers. It allows you to enter a paper or author of
interest and then maps out related works in an intuitive network, showing how different
research connects and evolves over time - particularly useful for literature reviews and
discovering new relevant sources within your field. I am aware of this tool but
haven't really delved into it at all...
Image Generation
*
This is where it gets fun - I was experimenting with these for my vignettes and ended up
getting an annual subscription to Midjourney<https://www.midjourney.com/imagine>ne>.
I was incredibly frustrated with ChatGPT around getting two images and then altering one -
frankly, it was impossible with ChatGPT. Midjourney allows you to highlight a specific
part of the image and then using prompts, you can alter the image with precision. The
quality and capacity of this tool is mind-blowing. HOWEVER - it comes at a price - to get
the specific functionality you need, they nudge you into taking out an ANNUAL subscription
at £89 per year. So I'd only advise using this tool if you have a specific
purpose/need in mind - a lot cheaper than hiring an artist... Happy to demonstrate this -
just ask - also happy to try and generate images for anyone using my account.
*
Hot off the press - Gemini launched their latest image generation model the other week -
and you can now feed it an image and change aspects of it using prompts. Watching some of
the videos online, it looks amazing - however, I was less impressed when I tried it
myself, but then again I've only dabbled a bit with it since launch. Access to this is
free with a Google account, but through something called
GoogleAIStudio<https://aistudio.google.com/prompts/new_chat> - you then have to
select "Gemini2.0 Flash (image Generation) experimental" as the model to
experiment with
Power Point - Information Art and diagrams
*
Napkin<https://www.napkin.ai/> - It's free and simple to use - basically can
turn simple lists or process narratives into nice AI-generated infographics. I've used
this recently on two PowerPoint decks I've been working on - and it just gets
better...
Consensus<https://consensus.app/search/>
*
This is a good one for fact checking assertions folk make -
@Katie<mailto:katie.oneill@stir.ac.uk> - one for you - I Asked it "Whether the
moon landings were fake?" and got this response (thought it did a pretty good
job):
*
The question of whether the moon landings were faked has been a topic of conspiracy
theories for decades. Despite overwhelming evidence supporting the authenticity of the
Apollo missions, a minority of people continue to believe they were staged.
Evidence Supporting the Moon Landings
*
Scientific and Physical Evidence: The Apollo missions left behind substantial evidence,
including radio transmissions, photographs, film, and rock and soil samples from the lunar
surface, which have been extensively analyzed and verified by scientists
worldwide7<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-7>.
*
Historical and Technological Achievements: The Apollo program is recognized as a
significant technological achievement, with twelve astronauts exploring the lunar surface
between 1969 and
19729<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-9>.
*
Visual and Topographic Analysis: While some conspiracy theorists claim that images from
the Apollo missions were manipulated, topographic analyses and comparisons with simulated
lunar views have been conducted to verify the authenticity of these
images8<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-8>.
Conspiracy Theories and Public Perception
*
Conspiracy Theories: A small but vocal group has long claimed that the moon landings were
faked, often citing supposed photographic anomalies and government distrust as
evidence1<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-1>
4<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-4>
9<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-9>.
*
Public Belief: Opinion polls have shown that a minority of the population, ranging from
10-25%, have expressed doubts about the moon landings, influenced by conspiracy theories
and media
portrayals2<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-2>
4<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-4>.
*
Psychological and Sociological Factors: Belief in such conspiracies is often fueled by
pre-existing prejudices and a tendency to seek information that confirms these beliefs, a
phenomenon known as confirmation
bias1<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-1>
5<https://consensus.app/results/?q=Whether%20the%20moon%20landings%20were%20fake%3F&pro=on#result-5>.
Conclusion
The moon landings are supported by a wealth of scientific evidence and are considered one
of humanity's greatest achievements. While conspiracy theories persist, they are
largely based on misinformation and a distrust of governmental and scientific
institutions. The evidence overwhelmingly supports the reality of the Apollo missions.
Anyhow - I wouldn't have written this email if I wasn't stuck at home with my leg
up. Hopefully, it will be a useful resource and provides us with some options for
demonstrations at a future lab should there be interest.
Cheers,
Stewart
PS There are LOADS more tools out there - one that many people use is
Perplexity<https://www.perplexity.ai/> - I haven't tried this tool, but it's
mostly free, and I always hear good things about it...
Stewart Robertson
Behavioural Science PhD Student
Stirling Management School
University of Stirling
Stirling
FK9 4LA
[in]<https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewart-r-1a91701aa/>
[🌐<https://sites.google.com/view/stewartrobertson/home>]
[✉️<mailto:stewart.robertson@stir.ac.uk>]
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