Can I Use an AI to Summarise Research Papers for Me?
😞 This blog begins with a big sigh because, yes, these days, you can now use an AI to summarise papers for you. ➡️ But should you? That is another question entirely. You’ll make your own decision on this one as the glorious, sovereign individual you are. 😊 ⚠️ But speaking for myself, my decision on this one is a very firm NO and in this blog I outline three reasons why. 📚 If you get an AI to summarise a paper for you, you are not reading it for yourself. It doesn’t matter how good the summary is, or how thorough, or how shiny the new AI is. If you yourself don’t read the original, you can’t really know what it said. You remain ignorant of the paper’s actual premises and claims because you don’t have any real knowledge -- you only have what Shane Parrish (2023: 165)* calls the ‘illusion of knowledge’. Your job in your literature review is to evaluate previous work to make the case for why your research question should be asked, and you can’t make any goo...