How to use Elicit Research Artificial Intelligence for Better Results — Part 2
Introduction
Before reading this article, could I suggest you make sure you have read How to use Elicit Research Artificial Intelligence for Better Results — Part 1. It provides the basic use and magic of Elicit and you may not have any need to go deeper. This second part is for those who like exploring rabbit holes. So with Elicit fired up, let us go exploring!
Digging Deeper with Research Questions
Following on from our initial research, the next step is to dig deeper into the overall topic by brainstorming some research questions. This is an established task within Elicit. Click on Tasks in the menu top right and then you may see “Brainstorm research questions” as the second task on the list or type “brain” into the search box and it will come up. In the “Input” field, enter your major project’s term. The video uses the example of “Governance of AI”. Then the program will generate a list of additional research questions to explore. The brainstorming step could be very useful if you are writing a book or research paper, but if you are doing an assignment, it will contain the questions in the summary.
To progress this feature further, you can “star” the questions you prefer and then click on “Clear Unstarred” at the top of the page. If you go to the bottom of the page now, you can click on “Show more like starred” and the platform will generate more questions. My understanding is that the platform crawls the citations in the starred papers to find other papers of relevance.
If you already have questions in your profiling document, you can copy and paste these on to the page and click on “More like starred” again. Once completed, clear all the unstarred questions and then you can download all the questions to a CSV spreadsheet or copy and paste them into your document.
Things are building up. The next process in the workflow is to take specific questions and narrow them down even further. If you select a question from your document, you can copy it and go back to Elicit. Click on “Tasks” again and then type “Help” into the search box. We are looking for a task called “Help me be more specific”. Activate this task and then paste your question from the document into the input field. The platform will generate several questions to answer and you select the ones that suit by clicking on the star. When finished, you have generated further research questions to pursue. You can now download the results to a CSV spreadsheet, or again copy and paste them to your document.
It’s probably appropriate to provide a couple of options here. You have already gone a long way down the rabbit hole if you have completed all the above. You can either take some questions you have generated and continue wandering around down there, or come up for air and start writing.
If you are still researching, you would take some questions you have generated in the brainstorming session and follow them through using the same processes listed here.
Tasks
The Tasks list has several very useful functions and there are too many to go through in this article. I suggest you visit Elicit and use a test subject to explore the different tasks.
A couple that are worth mentioning, however, are:-
- Bias Buster — Enter an issue you might confront and find some alternative ways of thinking.
- Rephrase — Enter a sentence and have it paraphrased. Be careful if you are writing academic papers as there is no certainty the paraphrased sentence isn’t somewhere else online.
- Abstract Summarisation — Great way to generate an abstract or TL:DR version of an article or paper. Input the article and Elicit will generate short snippets you can place in an Abstract. Choose the sentences you like, star them and clear the others and get Elicit to generate more like the starred version.
- Positive Reframe — Input a negative statement and receive other ways of looking at the issue.
- Brainstorming Possible Counterarguments — A useful tool to counter confirmation bias. Enter your argument and consider the alternatives.
The Tasks area contains functions that others have written and made public besides the Elicit ones supplied. You can also write your own tasks in Elicit, which can be private or you can release them for public use on the platform.
Finding Experts
In an earlier version of Elicit shown on the video, Elicit Effective Thesis Intro it shows a task to find experts in a field. It appears this task is no longer available in the current iteration. I can see a considerable use for such a tool to identify other people who are experts in a field so you can research their writings. I hope the task returns.
Conclusion
Elicit is a magnificent research tool. It is still in the earlier stages of development as a platform. It’s slow to render some screens, but appears quick in returning results. As the platform develops and matures, it can only get better and better. I, for one, will use it regularly for my research and improving my skills by interrogating the platform. I look forward to exciting times ahead with AI in research.
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