{"id":1606,"date":"2024-03-19T23:05:38","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T23:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/?p=1606"},"modified":"2024-03-19T23:05:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T23:05:38","slug":"generative-ai-platforms-and-ecology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/2024\/03\/19\/generative-ai-platforms-and-ecology\/","title":{"rendered":"Generative AI Platforms and Ecology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Kathleen Carroll<\/p>\n<p>Conversations about AI and its potential ramifications for ecology have been abound in my lab, department, and on Twitter. Given the number of conversations I have been privy to, I wanted to share my insights with other Early Career Folks. However, I am by no means an expert on using AI in science and would love to have a conversation with others who have more experience! Please reach out to both me (@GuloToTaxidea) and the section (@ESA_EarlyCareer) on Twitter to continue this conversation!<\/p>\n<p>Free generative AI platforms I have explored (there are so so so many more) and what I view as their main pros and cons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ChatGPT\n<ul>\n<li>Pros:\n<ul>\n<li>Great for text editing text and code \u2013 a non-native English speaking labmate to me they found that ChatGPT made their editing process much less painless for scientific publications<\/li>\n<li>It is widely used and recognized \u2013 so it links to many other programs (e.g., Glasp for note taking is powered by ChatGPT as is Grammarly)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Cons:\n<ul>\n<li>Makes up fake citations in default settings (why?!?!)<\/li>\n<li>If you ask it a question, it may provide some incorrect information<\/li>\n<li>limited knowledge of events that occurred after September 2021<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Consensus\n<ul>\n<li>Pros:\n<ul>\n<li>Designed for scientists<\/li>\n<li>Consolidates articles<\/li>\n<li>Can provide information on scientific consensuses from papers<\/li>\n<li>Simple links to full text<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Cons:\n<ul>\n<li>Less flexible than elicit so article filtering isn\u2019t as easy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Both?\n<ul>\n<li>Gives a summary of top 5-10 papers which can be great if you only need some literature but is also limiting for many nuanced questions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Elicit\n<ul>\n<li>Pros:\n<ul>\n<li>Designed for scientists<\/li>\n<li>Consolidates articles<\/li>\n<li>You can add your own columns based on important search criteria<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Cons:\n<ul>\n<li>Only seems to search abstracts of papers for key search terms<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Both?\n<ul>\n<li>Elicit seems to find different papers than Google Scholar (which also uses AI) and I have no idea why \u2013 I still recommend checking both<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I also compiled a list of what seems to be the consensus on how we should (or should not) be using generative AIs in our daily work. <strong><u>Remember though, that this list is not comprehensive or definitive. Before using AI check your university, company, and publisher\u2019s requirements for using and reporting! <\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Do:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>use generative AIs to help you find papers\/citations (not ChatGPT \u2013see cons above)<\/li>\n<li>use generative AIs to find cool coding solutions to problems you haven\u2019t been able to solve<\/li>\n<li>clearly acknowledge any contribution made by AI software in Methods and\/or Acknowledgements \u2013 as required by most publishers and jounrals<\/li>\n<li>use generative AIs for grammatical editing<\/li>\n<li>use generative AIs to brainstorm new ideas by asking questions<\/li>\n<li>upload confusing papers and ask generative AIs questions about them (I find it helpful to ask things like, \u201cwhat are the five main points of Article XYZ?\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>ask generative AIs for mind-maps of topics you want to learn more about<\/li>\n<li>ask generative AIs for an outline of steps to master a new skill or topic\/or for new class preps \u2013 see image<\/li>\n<li>one of the funnier uses I have seen is using generative AI to get help writing professional emails \u2013 you can ask an AI to write you a more professional version of an email you have composed (especially if you have a tendency to write snarky emails like one of my close friends who then sends them to me for editing \u2013 guess I\u2019m out of a job)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don\u2019t:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>use generative AIs to write original content (e.g., new sentences, whole paragraphs, papers, or lit reviews) and publish it as your own<\/li>\n<li>assume that the information provided is automatically correct \u2013 I asked ChatGPT about a paper after only providing the DOI and it summarized a completely different paper<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kathleen Carroll Conversations about AI and its potential ramifications for ecology have been abound in my lab, department, and on Twitter. Given the number of conversations I have been privy to, I wanted to share my insights with other Early Career Folks. However, I am by no means an expert on using AI in science and would love to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-early-career","category-science-communication","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1607,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/1607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}