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How are you (not?) using AI?

Now that it’s mid-summer, I’ve been in the grip of doing research but also starting to think about the fall semester. Basically, I’ve been doing things the old-fashioned way, not using AI in research or teaching (as I have a ton of concerns about it)–and my sense, at least anecdotally, is that many in the humanities are pretty resistant to it too.

That said, I am interested to hear whether people are using AI in research and/or teaching, and if so how. (I’m also interested to hear from those who aren’t!).

Any readers willing to share?

Posted in , ,

15 responses to “How are you (not?) using AI?”

  1. Anonymous

    Thanks for raising this question. I am not using AI in research or writing. I enjoy writing and I would not want to relinquish control over the process. To be clear, I struggle writing sometimes, that is, I struggle getting my point clear. But working through this is how I get clear about my own ideas and views. I am not so confident that I would readily identify an idea or view as my own were it obtained with the aid of AI (LLM, in particular).

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I use AI basically as Google on steroids. I find it very useful for finding papers on very niche topics, or for answering questions of the sort, “has any one defended X and Y together?” It’s not always perfectly reliable, but it’s useful for this purpose.

    I occasionally tried running philosophical ideas with AI, but I found these conversations useless. I don’t use it for any of the actual writing (I like my own writing style better than the AI’s).

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Which AI do you use for finding papers?

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        Mostly Grok.

  3. Anonymous

    I have sometimes used AI to get a summary of a book to see if it is close enough in topic rather than just title to what I am interested in engaging with to be worth reading, or if I skimmed it a bit to confirm that I captured the main points in my head. Other than that I am not using it. To use it in writing seems false to me– it is important to me that my writing is mine– my voice, my reflections. And I learn to think by writing.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    I send the AI a full sentence I wrote sometimes to ask if I used a certain English phrase correctly (or as ChatGPT says, if it’s “idiomatic”). I find this very helpful. I also ask for a list of synonyms for certain words sometimes.

    I tried using AI for research to find sources a few times but it was always very disappointing.

    Reply
  5. Michel

    Not.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I recall using AI on two distinct occasions. One was to suggest different writing styles of sentences from a paper I submitted to an essay competition. The other was to translate SEP articles paragraph by paragraph (that I would proceed and check) to undergrad/grad students from my country. Since most of my writing process takes place on Overleaf and Goodnotes and the resources I value on them do not rely on AI, I simply do not use it nor do I feel any necessity to. If I want to become acquainted with a topic, I go to SEP/IEP or Phil Compass. If I wanna know if a book fits my purposes, I look for book reviews or go to relevant chapters to take a look.

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    I use ChatGPT to find relevant papers to read. I do it at the end of a writing process — I read enough papers/develop enough interest in something to draft a paper of it, then inevitably along the way I say some things that I feel have probably been discussed before. Then I use ChatGPT to help me find what those things are, because I find it hard to use Google to do that accurately. After some back and forth (‘those papers discuss X, but the view I’m discussing is really Y’), GPT will come up with a decent list of papers, and I’ll skim them all and often find a few that actually are relevant to my paper, and then I’ll read those. This has been a lot faster for me than using google or asking around.

    I also use ChatGPT to find typos. But I don’t use it for style editing or anything else. I’m worried that using it for any kind of editing other than typos will help contribute to something I’m noticing, which is that a lot of people are starting to sound more like AI in their writing (even people who I think don’t use AI.) We see too many AI-written or edited things around and it influences how we write ourselves.

    I’m a little worried about even feeding it my papers to find typos, because it has now read enough of my papers to start imitating my writing style. Actually I find it much more pleasant to read than the usual AI syntax/etc. But it also creeps me out. Overall, worth it, because I have a lot of typos, and I feel embarrassed when I ask humans for feedback and then realize afterwards my paper is typo-ridden.

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    I have a lot of anxiety about writing and have some difficulty with organization so, I use AI as a kind of writing coach. It stores a complicated outline for my book project, and being able to “talk” to Claude about the points I want to make in each chapter helps me to organize the sections, try out different options in revision, etc. I sometimes ask Claude to summarize my writing as well, again to help me stay organized, and although I never prefer its formulations to my own, sometimes the way that it presents my ideas prompts me to look for a clearer way of articulating them. I also find that making the writing process a little more interactive–checking in with “someone”–helps emotionally. Basically, I’m experimenting with using AI as a tool to assist with what I find particularly difficult about writing, and have been finding it helpful.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    It seems that I use AI a bit more than the other commentors. When I start working on a new paper, I will frequently hand-write the argument until I come up with something precise and defensible. Then I will identify areas where I need to do more research: sociological claims, ready-made defenses, etc.

    I will then type my stuff, and plug it into ChatGPT Pro with a full set of instructions to help me identify papers and books that I need to read. I will ask for Chat to give me “must-read” works, “probably read” works, and “probably do not read” things. And I say that each paper or book needs to include a link. I then do the readings myself. Often, it’s pretty bad at identifying what I need, but you just have to use the tool discerningly—obviously.

    The worst / most annoying part about researching is trying to find appropriate sociological claims. Many of my arguments rely on me noticing that people frequently don’t recognize that their premises / concepts have particular unwanted implications, and so I need to find instances where individuals rely on these things but don’t recognize the implication. AI is extraordinarily helpful in this. In particular, there are many different ways that philosophers talk about similar concepts, and sometimes I don’t remember all of these when I ctrl-F a book or paper to find the central concept. Because LLMs have statistical correlations among concepts, Chat may identify passages that I might have otherwise skipped over.

    Additionally, if you’re not using AI to help you get your citations in order, what are you doing!?

    I also agree pretty strongly with the above commentor who says that AI is bad at doing philosophy. It just does not “understand” good philosophy. (William D’Allesandro made an interesting case for why recently: https://philpapers.org/rec/DALLAP-6) Don’t use it to do your writing or thinking. It is particularly bad at presenting arguments in standard form, which (in my opinion) is the pinnacle of good, clear philosophical writing (though not the nicest to read all the time).

    Reply
    1. Daniel

      You ask “Additionally, if you’re not using AI to help you get your citations in order, what are you doing!?” I use Zotero to handle citations.

      Reply
  10. Anonymous

    I have found the latest Claude models to be extremely useful for a number of things:

    – Checking manuscripts before submission and proofs after typesetting. This has often found errors that I missed on a manual reading.
    – Helping me choose between different possible names, examples, ways of putting things, or other options. I’m indecisive and often spend way too much time on this sort of thing. Claude helps make me more decisive, even when I don’t go along with it.
    – Preliminary feedback on an argument or the novelty of an idea, before investing much time into it.
    – Correcting references in my central bibliography
    – General LaTeX help
    – Helping me understand very dense and difficult articles outside my subfield

    On this basis I would say that Claude has made real improvements to my work and my productivity. Of course it has flaws, but overall I have found it to be a very helpful research assistant.

    Reply
  11. Trevor Hedberg

    I have used AI rudimentarily only to get a better understanding of how it works so that I can talk in a formed way about it when I teach Ethics of AI. I have thus far never used it in my own writing or to aid my research. (That includes amassing and formatting citations — I never found this difficult or time consuming pre-AI and have not changed my behavior.) My main reason for refraining from AI use is that the output of these systems does not feel like my own work: passing it off as my own thoughts, ideas, writing style, etc., would feel inauthentic. Regardless of whether its use is permissible (a different question altogether), I do not like how using it changes my relationship to my work. I want the words on the page and the ideas they represent, however good or flawed, to be the product of my own mind, and I believe this purity of thought is irreparably contaminated if AI-generated content is used.

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    I’ve never tried using AI for any purpose. I suppose I’m just not interested enough, and it’s hard enough to master the tools I already use.

    Reply

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