AI Tools for Enhanced Thesis Writing

Summary

Discover how AI tools are revolutionizing thesis writing, turning a once solitary task into a dynamic and interactive process. Andy Stapleton shares his insights on utilizing ChatGPT for customizing responses, mastering academic language, and finding references. He stresses the importance of AI tools like SciSpace and Cite Assistant for effective research assistance and delving into academic language with clarity. Moreover, proofreading tools like Trinka and Paperpal ensure polished writing, allowing supervisors to focus on the essence of your research. Embrace these AI advancements to enhance your academic writing process.

Highlights

• Andy shares how AI tools enhance the thesis writing process, making it less lonely and more interactive 🧑‍💻.
• Customize ChatGPT to interact with thesis-specific instructions for a personalized experience 🛠️.
• Utilize SciSpace and Cite Assistant to efficiently manage references and academic materials 📂.
• AI proofreaders like Trinka and Paperpal focus on refining your writing, highlighting your research's key points ✒️.

Key Takeaways

• AI tools have transformed thesis writing from a lonely endeavor into a collaborative process 🤝.
• ChatGPT can be customized to provide academic-focused responses, aiding in better thesis writing 📚.
• Using AI, like SciSpace and Cite Assistant, helps in effectively finding and using academic references 🔎.
• AI proofreaders such as Trinka and Paperpal polish your writing, allowing supervisors to focus on the research content 📝.

Overview

Writing a thesis no longer needs to be a solitary struggle, thanks to the rise of AI tools. Andy Stapleton delves into this topic, illustrating how using ChatGPT and other AI resources can transform thesis writing into a more engaging and less daunting task. With AI acting as a virtual research assistant, writers can now brainstorm ideas and fine-tune their academic language with ease.

The video highlights the customization of ChatGPT to suit thesis writing, emphasizing the necessity of specific instructions for academic-focused feedback. Andy also introduces tools like SciSpace and Cite Assistant, which assist in locating and managing academic references efficiently, saving valuable time during research.

Finally, Andy underscores the value of tools like Trinka and Paperpal for proofreading, which ensure that a thesis is polished and professional. By utilizing these tools, writers can present well-structured work, allowing supervisors to concentrate on the research's substantive aspects rather than grammatical errors.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction to AI Tools for Thesis Writing The chapter discusses the traditional challenges of thesis writing, which was often a solitary and daunting task. It highlights the transformation brought by AI tools, making the process more engaging and supportive. AI now acts as a research assistant, helping to maintain creativity and efficiency. The author recommends using AI language models like ChatGPT to facilitate writing, emphasizing personal preference for selecting the most suitable tool.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Customizing AI for Personal Research Projects This chapter discusses the benefits of customizing AI, specifically Chat GPT, for personal research projects. It highlights the process of adding custom instructions to Chat GPT to enhance its interactions based on the user's specific needs, such as when undertaking significant research tasks like a thesis or dissertation.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Using AI for Academic Language Enhancement In the chapter titled 'Using AI for Academic Language Enhancement,' the primary focus is on utilizing AI to aid in the process of writing a thesis. The chapter emphasizes the importance of articulating your current work situation clearly, such as being a thesis writer. This clarity ensures that the AI can provide information in a format that is practical and helpful for thesis writing. Additionally, although personal hobbies and goals are mentioned, they are deemed less relevant in the context of leveraging AI for academic purposes. The essential takeaway is the role of AI in facilitating idea exchange and providing corrections during the thesis writing process.
• 05:30 - 07:30: AI as a Research and Reference Assistant The chapter titled 'AI as a Research and Reference Assistant' explores how AI, like ChatGPT, can be tailored to assist in academic writing by adjusting its language formality and response length. It highlights the flexibility of AI in generating academically focused content, suitable for theses or dissertations. This adaptability provides extensive material for research, offering more content to analyze, integrate, or modify, thus enhancing the writing process.
• 07:30 - 10:00: AI Proofreading Tools for Academic Writing The chapter discusses the use of AI proofreading tools in academic writing and focuses on how to customize these tools to ensure they remain neutral and factual. It emphasizes that AI tools, like ChatGPT, should avoid giving opinions in academic contexts and instead rely on scientific data and facts. Users are advised to specify these preferences when setting up their AI tools for writing purposes.

AI Tools for Enhanced Thesis Writing Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 writing your thesis used to be this really lonely academic process where you sit in a library or wherever you want to be and you're just like oh oh what am I writing oh this is so sad am I writing that the right way but now with AI tools it's become easier than ever to keep that Creative Juice flowing and use it as like a research assistant as you're writing this is what I would do the first thing I'd like to do is head over to chat GPT or you could even use perplexity or whatever sort of like large language model you like but this is why I use chat GPT is because if I'm
• 00:30 - 01:00 undertaking a large project I'm going up here and I'm clicking on customize chat GPT and it's this dialogue box that is really really useful because here you can add custom instructions so here it says what would you like chat GPT to know about you to provide better responses and they've got some thought starters there so if you're starting a big research project like writing your thesis um writing a dissertation you should actually go in and change how you want GPT to interact with you so where
• 01:00 - 01:30 are you based that's not super important where what do you do for work now that's very very important what you do for work at the moment is you are a thesis writer you need to be that specific to make sure that it gets all of the information in a useful format for you and then you've got what are your hobbies and interests not super useful and then what subjects can you talk about for hours what are some goals you have so here you just need to talk about the fact that you're writing a thesis that you need help writing that thesis by bouncing up ideas and sort of like correcting any
• 01:30 - 02:00 academic writing that sort of stuff and then down here how would you like chat GPT to respond how formal or casual should chat GPT now this is super powerful you can say I want it to be academically focused I want academic language that is suitable for a thesis or dissertation how long or short should they be you want longer responses if you're writing your thesis or dissertation because then it will give you more to work with more to think about more to add more to subtract more
• 02:00 - 02:30 to edit that's the stuff you really want how should you be addressed it doesn't matter should chat GPT have opinions on topics or remain neutral you don't want any opinions you want to stick to fact-based stuff so you can say in there stick to facts stick to um scientific data do not give me opinions on anything um that you think about this uh writing that sort of stuff should all be included in your customized chat GPT option and I haven't seen this anywhere
• 02:30 - 03:00 else other than chat GPT which is why it is my go-to at the moment so this is the sort of stuff you can do so make this paragraph stand more academic now as you're writing when I was writing my thesis this one where is it look at this I would sit there for hours thinking about how's like the best way to write this and I would get stuck in my own mind ruminating over the same sentences here now you can use chat GPT as that kind of writing assistant so make this paragraph same more academic
• 03:00 - 03:30 and then I posted in the paragraph and it's given me an option figure X illustrates the morphology of silver nwire only and silver Nano water carbon Nan tube Nano composite films blah blah blah and so I obviously had to come up with the first draft the thing about your thesis is you can't get chat GPT to write about your results unless you put those results in as a figure but even then you need to be the one that really drives that first draft in my opinion and so now we've got this the AFM data
• 03:30 - 04:00 presented in blah blah blah so that will make it sound much more academic and you can go through and be like yes I like this bit I don't like this bit but that's how I would use it the second way I would use chat GPT is by making sure that I'm using the appropriate academic language now when you're entering a research field there's all this language you need to get used to but it doesn't sort of like come naturally or at least it didn't to me so if I wanted to talk about a certain aspect of my study quite often I'd have to go and read about it to go oh that's how they explain it now that's super easy because you can use a
• 04:00 - 04:30 prompt like this what is the best way to describe the process of delamination so I wanted to say that something delaminated but I want to know about the language about the use of different um terminologies that I could use in my own report or my dissertation so here delamination is the process where layers and a composite material separate so I may need to make sure that I mention composite material and that uh it's likely to distress and fatigue or imperfection so all of these are ways that I can talk about delamination that
• 04:30 - 05:00 I didn't know about before stress concentration that is very important for me fatigue propagation separation so those are the steps that I need to make sure I address if I'm writing about delamination of my transparent electrodes and this makes it so easy to sound more professional to sound um more academic to make sure you're using the right terms and you're not just sort of like using High School level uh terminology to be like oh yeah it kind of splits and separates here you can
• 05:00 - 05:30 start to go in and talk about all of that for the propagation separation you can talk about stress concentration fatigue and Imperfections all of that sort of stuff now you have the language at your fingertips to talk about anything academic that you want sometimes as you're writing your thesis and dissertation there's just that one sort of like perfect reference that you need to find and it's really hard to find it because it's just lost to the world this is where I use things like site assistant or s space so site
• 05:30 - 06:00 assistant um if you go to site. a which is here and then you click up here into assistant you click there and then you get access to this AI research partner and you can ask a question but go down here go to settings first so here you can actually sort of change how it responds so I want to make sure that uh let's have a look okay I always want to use references I want both you structures response yes if I've got a certain year range for a paper you know if I want something more recent I can
• 06:00 - 06:30 put it in here but I make sure that that is set appropriately for the sort of response I want and if you're writing your PhD thesis or your dissertation for your Masters whatever it is you have to make sure that uh you are getting appropriate responses that will match what you want to say and for a thesis you want that to be as academic and referenced as possible so I'll go in here and I'll ask questions as I'm sort of you know typing up my thesis I'll be like oh I need a little reference just to say this or I know there was this paper that said this I can go in and
• 06:30 - 07:00 find it using um an AI research partner where I can go and find those references another one I would use and this is probably one I use more often is siace and I'll go in and once again I will ask a question here if I've got a specific PDF I can ask questions about that PDF I can extract data I can paraphrase I can do everything that I really want to do in si space for a thesis or dissertation dissertation which is why it's my go-to so as I'm writing my thesis I'm sort of juggling those two things creating
• 07:00 - 07:30 really sort of rigorous academic language but also I'm trying to find evidence at the same time to support what I'm saying for example with the delamination thing I can go find examples about delamination in the literature something that I wouldn't have necessarily done during my literature review and it just sort of like works together you're just sort of like writing referencing writing referencing reading reading reading referencing you know you got to read these references by the way the last way that's really valuable for enhancing
• 07:30 - 08:00 your academic writing is by using AI proof readers there's two that I really like the first one is trinker trinker by an Argo here is a really great way to actually check your academic writing I've tested it on a range of different papers that I've had in the past this is what they look like so um once you get it sort of like checked by trinker you do get a tracked changes Word document and that is just like your supervisor at least my supervisor used to give back to me so it is a nice first step for
• 08:00 - 08:30 checking all of your academic writing I really like it and then you know it's got little comments down the side here it's got the track changes that is exactly what I want when I am looking through that first draft or trying to make it better you get up to 30,000 words in one go one credit will use 5,000 words so you do get quite a generous free limit with trinker but if you're checking your thesis or your dissertation you need to make sure that you're checking it all in one go or you're sort of like putting it in in sections or putting it in in chapters
• 08:30 - 09:00 the last thing I really like is paper pal paper pal this is their edit paper pal section um this is their web interface but you can also install it on word go check out my other video where I talk about using paper pal in more detail but the one thing I like about this is you can paste in sections and then you get all of these checks along the side here so you can see that this one you know it doesn't like that and it's changing it to the green and then it's got this one from these images it is clear C yes okay so by using these
• 09:00 - 09:30 tools you'll be making sure that your supervisor isn't distracted by those silly little mistakes they're actually addressing the underlying science and research that you want to address those are the most important changes I used to get back stuff all the time being like full stop here make sure you do the thing there and I was like yes I get it I get it I get it I'm bad at putting full stops but what do you think of the actual science in here that was far more useful because that's the thing that actually gets you a PhD or Gets You Through Your Mind Masters not the
• 09:30 - 10:00 position of certain full stops or you know commas or semicolons however you use them if you like this video go check out this one where I talk about AI enhanced academic writing where there's more tools to make sure that your academic writing is chef's kiss