Inspired by the latest piece by Justin Weinberg at the Daily Nous (@DailyNous) on good uses of #ChatGPT, I tried out #Humata, a LLM powered PDF reading tool.
I am actually a bit excited: I uploaded a recent publication of ours, and I asked it typical questions like "what are the main points?", "how does this argument follow from that?" etc. The answers I got were mostly relevant, but somewhat obvious and generic, and often missed essential points and subtle implications.
Actually, that's exactly how you feel about what your reviewers have to say.
And this is so cool: we have a tool for pre-review! Is an argument misunderstood? Make it more clear. Was an implication not realized? Spell it out. Did a subtle thought get lost? Put it into a separate paragraph. Until you feel that even the algorithm gets it.
I think this is where the real applications are: whether a sparring partner in a socratic dialogue, or a virtual reader – the AI is invaluable to help you shape and hone and improve your own thoughts. Not as a substitute for thinking.
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https://dailynous.com/2023/02/08/how-academics-can-use-chatgpt/
