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Empower - Module 9 - Searching with Artificial Intelligence

Generative AI Tools

Perplexity

Free LLM Chatbot + Research Search Engine

  • Pros:
    • Great for:
      • Generating Ideas
      • Narrowing/Broadening Topics
      • Searching the Internet
      • Generating Broad Overviews of Topics
    • Uses multiple LLMs and daily-updated web indexes to produce content
    • Provides links to sources
    • Allows users to choose between "Web", "Academic", and "Social" search settings
    • Automatically generates follow-up question suggestions for users
  • Cons:
    • Some features are behind a paywall
    • No journal articles are linked or cited in content results.  "Academic" search setting links to credible web results, but not typically to academic journal articles.
    • Does not generate citations (but the provided links allow you to write them independently)

Elicit

LLM-Enabled Literature Reviews and Research Reports

  • Pros:
    • Great for:
      • Locating Academic Papers
      • Summarizing Findings of Multiple Academic Papers Simultaneously
      • Asking Questions about the Located Academic Papers
    • Uses multiple LLMs to accomplish a variety of tasks
      • Search Semantic Scholar for open source academic journals
      • Analyze selected papers for relevance to user prompts
      • Generate a detailed report/synthesis of the selected papers
      • LLM-Chatbot that answers user's follow-up questions about the report
    • Provides links to References
    • Allows users to download a PDF of the generated report
  • Cons:
    • Expanded features are hidden behind a paywall
    • All references are retrieved from the Semantic Scholar, an open-source, AI-driven database of scientific articles
    • Does not generate citations (but the provided links allow you to write them independently)

Copilot

Free LLM Chatbot + Automatically Incorporated Web Results

  • Pros:
    • Great for:
      • Generating Ideas
      • Narrowing/Broadening Topic
      • Identifying Additional Keywords
      • Generating Broad Overviews of Topics
    • Uses both its training resources and web results (Bing) to generate content
    • Links directly to the Bing results it pulls information from
  • Cons:
    • Relies exclusively on Bing search results
    • Additional plugins and applications beyond the LLM chatbot are behind a paywall with certain Microsoft 365 packages
    • Does not generate citations (but the provided links allow you to write them independently)

 

Google

Gemini - Free LLM Chatbot

Google Web Search Overview

  • Pros:
    • Chatbot:
      • Generating Ideas
      • Narrowing/Broadening Topic
      • Identifying Additional Keywords
      • Provides links to sources
      • Allows users to choose between the default and Deep Research settings
    • Google Web Search Overview
      • Automatically generated during Google searches
      • Uses both its training resources and web results (Google) to generate content
      • Links directly to the Google results it pulls information from
  • Cons:
    • Relies exclusively on Google search results
    • Must login to Google to access the Deep Research setting.
    • No journal articles are linked or cited in content results.  Deep Research search setting links to credible web results, but not typically to academic journal articles.
    • Does not generate citations (but the provided links allow you to write them independently)

ChatGPT

Free LLM Chatbot

  • Pros:
    • Great for:
      • Generating Ideas
      • Narrowing/Broadening Topics
      • Identifying additional keywords
      • Provides links to sources if prompted to do so
      • Allows users to choose between several settings, including the default, Search the Web, and Run Deep Research
  • Cons:
    • Must login to ChatGPT to access the Run Deep Research setting.
    • No journal articles are linked or cited in content results.  Run Deep Research setting links to credible web results, but not typically to academic journal articles.
    • Links are not provided unless ChatGPT is prompted to do so.  
    • Does not generate citations (but the provided links allow you to write them independently)

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