I use AI to do research but verify all quotes / statistics independently. I find it helps me brainstorm ideas and find supporting statistics which would have taken me hours to find in the past.
Two and soon to be three not very exciting but effective use cases. I use Perplexity (because it is supposedly the most accurate) to do basic research that I would have done earlier with a search engine. It gets me all I need, but I'm not looking for cutting edge scholarship;. Second, because of Steven JOhnson's presentation to NBIC, I bought a Notebook LM subscription. Best thing there is that it did podcasts of the penultimate drafts of my book. Terrific. Great summaries. Funnier than my prose. Even saw some themes I didn't. Made the final draft a lot better, albeit on the margins, not core content. Third, I'll soon invest in an AI startup that will help peacebuilders and others work through tons of data in making what we call conflict assessements. Not the kind of writing I do, but looks very promising for specialists like those at USAID, if they still had their jobs of course. NOTE HOWEVER: I haven't done any of this systematically, so if club members have good on ramps to that, I'd love it!!!!!!
Just tried out Perplexity and NotebookLM. OMG, both are mind-blowing. I will use Perplexity as well as ChatGPT for research for my book, and NotebookLM is great for depth interviews I am doing. I tired out the podcast feature, based on two interviews - it was really engaging and interesting. Thanks for these tips!
I started as a skeptic and still am in some ways. But, even just literally playing around with Perplexity for a few minutes, it became clear how much it could help in doing basic research even in academia where I've spent much of my career. For example, we spent the first years of our PhD programs doing literature reviews. AI doesn't eliminate the need for that skill set, but it can do 90ish% of the work along those lines in a matter of minutes. You still need to make sense of what it comes up with--just as you do with your more traditional research. And it's only going to get more effective. The challenge is to see that it is used in appropriate ways.
Rich. First, you can't keep up. Even if you do AI for a living which I do not. All I did was feed it the whole manuscript. Then each chapter. Generated about a half hour discussion between two human sounding "voices." Unlike many LLM's, (I think) Notebook only uses the data you give it. So, it almost couldn't say something like "your book is really stupid becaus you missed X, Y, and Z which would have been easy to find if you had done a conventional Google search." I plan to redo at least the one for the full book and have it on my web site when it goes live just before the pub date. Assuming that that is OK with the copyright gods.
Tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT-o3 have become really valuable research partners. When I want a specific case study or am wondering what the research says about a concept...they're not my starting place for nearly all research.
I use Perplexity deep research for an initial research deep dive on a topic. I prompt with something like: give me a detailed overview of XYZ. List proponents and detractors, relevant viewpoints or studies for and against, recent updates or clarifications, and related topics I should be aware of.
I love Granola for interview notes - the synthesis is just unbelievable and the ability to surface next actions saves a ton of time!
Like others here, I use Perplexity for research, Notebook LM to help synthesise research, and Chat or Claude as a sounding board, idea generator, or editor to help refine things I've written. (But the final output is always refined again by me). I also use ProWritingAid (it's a bit like Grammarly, but better imho) and it has built in AI that can help to analyse or improve your drafts and generate various reports.
I published my (first) business book in 2023, just before AI really became mainstream to the public, so it was written without any AI, although I did use Chat to help develop the title. Something I wasn't able to do originally was the audiobook version, and I'm now considering developing my voice clone via Eleven Labs (not licensed publicly though) so I can publish the audiobook read by "AI-me". It still takes time, but much less time than manually reading the whole book.
This year, my side project is writing a fiction book and it's astounding to see how far things have come in just 2 years, with the AI support capabilities now available to assist authors. I feel like the process is much easier this time around. :)
I also publish an audio-only podcast and use Descript as part of that process. It has some amazing AI capabilities for improving sound quality, AND I just LOVE the editing functionality, because it's made for writers. It creates a transcription of the audio, and then you edit the transcription to edit the audio. So simple! (it's a bit more complicated if you're doing video).
I'm about to learn how to use GumLoop to create Agentic-type automated workflows that can help with research, finding my target market, helping me to build email sequences etc.
I use Perplexity at least a dozen times a day for everything, but especially for research during my writing. NotebookLM is amazing/incredible. I put articles and webpages I find through Perplexity into it and then can ask it questions along the way, but recently I've used it for my novel writing with questions like. Please list all the characters in alphabetical order with a brief description of their role. Please evaluate the arc of XX character. Please apply the Hero's Journey to my novel. I also asked it to create a podcast to discuss any plot holes or incomplete storylines. It was an incomplete draft so there were many, but it found some I hadn't remembered. I'm giving a workshop on using AI for writing this weekend so hopefully I can help other writers learn to use these tools for things other than writing itself.
BTW, I'd very much like to get in touch with Steven Johnson of NotebookLM fame if anyone can make the connection :-) I would love to work with his team on these applications as well as some for medical education... A second encore career???
I use AI to do research but verify all quotes / statistics independently. I find it helps me brainstorm ideas and find supporting statistics which would have taken me hours to find in the past.
Thanks Mary. Do you have a specific AI program you like to use?
Two and soon to be three not very exciting but effective use cases. I use Perplexity (because it is supposedly the most accurate) to do basic research that I would have done earlier with a search engine. It gets me all I need, but I'm not looking for cutting edge scholarship;. Second, because of Steven JOhnson's presentation to NBIC, I bought a Notebook LM subscription. Best thing there is that it did podcasts of the penultimate drafts of my book. Terrific. Great summaries. Funnier than my prose. Even saw some themes I didn't. Made the final draft a lot better, albeit on the margins, not core content. Third, I'll soon invest in an AI startup that will help peacebuilders and others work through tons of data in making what we call conflict assessements. Not the kind of writing I do, but looks very promising for specialists like those at USAID, if they still had their jobs of course. NOTE HOWEVER: I haven't done any of this systematically, so if club members have good on ramps to that, I'd love it!!!!!!
Thanks Chip!
Just tried out Perplexity and NotebookLM. OMG, both are mind-blowing. I will use Perplexity as well as ChatGPT for research for my book, and NotebookLM is great for depth interviews I am doing. I tired out the podcast feature, based on two interviews - it was really engaging and interesting. Thanks for these tips!
I started as a skeptic and still am in some ways. But, even just literally playing around with Perplexity for a few minutes, it became clear how much it could help in doing basic research even in academia where I've spent much of my career. For example, we spent the first years of our PhD programs doing literature reviews. AI doesn't eliminate the need for that skill set, but it can do 90ish% of the work along those lines in a matter of minutes. You still need to make sense of what it comes up with--just as you do with your more traditional research. And it's only going to get more effective. The challenge is to see that it is used in appropriate ways.
Appreciate the tips Chip as I try to keep up… can you speak about your podcast conversions from book drafts
Rich. First, you can't keep up. Even if you do AI for a living which I do not. All I did was feed it the whole manuscript. Then each chapter. Generated about a half hour discussion between two human sounding "voices." Unlike many LLM's, (I think) Notebook only uses the data you give it. So, it almost couldn't say something like "your book is really stupid becaus you missed X, Y, and Z which would have been easy to find if you had done a conventional Google search." I plan to redo at least the one for the full book and have it on my web site when it goes live just before the pub date. Assuming that that is OK with the copyright gods.
Tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT-o3 have become really valuable research partners. When I want a specific case study or am wondering what the research says about a concept...they're not my starting place for nearly all research.
I use Perplexity deep research for an initial research deep dive on a topic. I prompt with something like: give me a detailed overview of XYZ. List proponents and detractors, relevant viewpoints or studies for and against, recent updates or clarifications, and related topics I should be aware of.
I love Granola for interview notes - the synthesis is just unbelievable and the ability to surface next actions saves a ton of time!
Like others here, I use Perplexity for research, Notebook LM to help synthesise research, and Chat or Claude as a sounding board, idea generator, or editor to help refine things I've written. (But the final output is always refined again by me). I also use ProWritingAid (it's a bit like Grammarly, but better imho) and it has built in AI that can help to analyse or improve your drafts and generate various reports.
I published my (first) business book in 2023, just before AI really became mainstream to the public, so it was written without any AI, although I did use Chat to help develop the title. Something I wasn't able to do originally was the audiobook version, and I'm now considering developing my voice clone via Eleven Labs (not licensed publicly though) so I can publish the audiobook read by "AI-me". It still takes time, but much less time than manually reading the whole book.
This year, my side project is writing a fiction book and it's astounding to see how far things have come in just 2 years, with the AI support capabilities now available to assist authors. I feel like the process is much easier this time around. :)
I also publish an audio-only podcast and use Descript as part of that process. It has some amazing AI capabilities for improving sound quality, AND I just LOVE the editing functionality, because it's made for writers. It creates a transcription of the audio, and then you edit the transcription to edit the audio. So simple! (it's a bit more complicated if you're doing video).
I'm about to learn how to use GumLoop to create Agentic-type automated workflows that can help with research, finding my target market, helping me to build email sequences etc.
I use Perplexity at least a dozen times a day for everything, but especially for research during my writing. NotebookLM is amazing/incredible. I put articles and webpages I find through Perplexity into it and then can ask it questions along the way, but recently I've used it for my novel writing with questions like. Please list all the characters in alphabetical order with a brief description of their role. Please evaluate the arc of XX character. Please apply the Hero's Journey to my novel. I also asked it to create a podcast to discuss any plot holes or incomplete storylines. It was an incomplete draft so there were many, but it found some I hadn't remembered. I'm giving a workshop on using AI for writing this weekend so hopefully I can help other writers learn to use these tools for things other than writing itself.
BTW, I'd very much like to get in touch with Steven Johnson of NotebookLM fame if anyone can make the connection :-) I would love to work with his team on these applications as well as some for medical education... A second encore career???