As a professor at The University of Denver, I am able to attend some amazing continuing education sessions. AI Research and Information Discovery is the source for this blog post.
Challenges that are common:
- Finding relevant resources
- Evaluating resources for relevance and bias
- Overwhelm regarding the amount of information available.
McKinsey & CO provided a new study about how businesses are using AI in various functions of the business. There is strong growth showing more companies are using AI for various functions. 78% are using at AI in at least one function.
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/quantumblack/our%20insights/the%20state%20of%20ai/2025/the-state-of-ai-how-organizations-are-rewiring-to-capture-value_final.pdf
Students polled state that 55% feel they are not being taught how to use AI properly during their educational programs.
Tools: Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemin/AI Studio, Specialized research tools
Instructor/Student uses: brainstorm, resource finder, prompt generator; assignment rubric creation, less searching time, course structure development. Narrowing search terms, creating research questions, suggesting resources, assignment ideas. Critical evaluation of AI suggestions, Feedback after a submission.
Google Gemini notes – Enhanced reasoning, deep research, transparent AI “thinking”, differentiated AI models (usage dependent), Google AI studio
Multiple AI-bots and their uniqueness – since we are early in this evolution, many companies are creating AI tools. Be sure to check the various different versions of each of the tools (ChatGPT 4.0 vs. 4.5) as they may result in different responses. Each is tailored to differents uses, ie image creation vs prompts vs code….
Changing which model to use, you can toggle between the various versions and it will share the uses for each:
There are additional settings to also cater to more creative (temperature), code creation, structured output etc.
AI-Powered Information Discovery Tools
- Connected Papers –
- Consensus
- Elicit.org
- Semantic Scholar
- Perpelexity.ai
Deep Research Tools – asking the large language model to do all of the research, analysis, etc. It can also find papers which you can filter and get abstracts and methodology in research.
- DeepSeek
- Elicit (this one has the filtering)
- Gemini
- CoPilot
- Open AI/Chat GPT
Ethics:
- Transparency: When to disclose AI tool use
- Verification: Fact- checking AI outputs
- Attribution: Citation practices
- Institutional policies vs industry norms
Ai Detection Tools:
- https://quillbot.com/ai-content-detector
- https://gptzero.me/
https://gemini.google/students/