37 Academic Research

hello again I'm Dr krippin today let's

talk about taking our research to a

higher level but before we do that as

always there's my email address aronin

gmail.com please email me if you have

any questions or comments about the

course so we are in Academia now we are

in the university all of us are

participating in the University so let's

think about what that means you come to

the university for a specific reason and

part of it is to learn how to do

research in a methodical way and

participate in this process of research

a university is like a research machine

it's always producing new research I'm a

part of it you're a part of it now too

and we want to learn how to do it the

right way especially if you're

interested in going to graduate school

some kind of school after the university

you definitely want to uh get a hang of

of the research process in the

University setting but just for success

in in the University now we also want to

get a handle on it so imagine uh there's

a

professor say a chemist okay a chemistry

professor at the University a long time

ago did some research and then wrote an

essay we'll say that's in 1999 in the

year 1999 there's this chemistry

professor did research then wrote an

essay presenting the results of the

research then a few few years later in

2005 a professor somewhere else in

France uh reads the research from

1999 and uses that that contributes to

her research that she does and then she

publishes her results in France in 2005

and then a few years later in 2012

someone in Germany reads those results

and uses those as part of their research

experiment and then they publish their

results and so on the next one in 2019

it gets passed on to 2024 and so the

research continues from one Professor to

the next right and the professors

influence students as well the

professors influence undergraduate

students in the lectures the students go

and hear the professor talking about the

thing that the professor's been reading

and experimenting with the professor

gives assignments to the undergraduates

which lead them to experience similar

things to what the professor is

interested in right so the

undergraduates are influenced by the

professor then they need to write essays

right like now you are in a course

you're writing an essay one of the

topics is AI for example right so you

now are doing research on AI why because

of a professor who me why am I

interested in it well generally it's

relevant to our future writing but also

I had people at my University also

conducting research right my University

is doing it so now it's to you you're

writing an essay about Ai and you have a

ta a graduate student who's reading what

you write so they are influenced by your

research when you write your essay you

will have some quotations in there some

new information maybe new ideas which

your ta will read and that will actually

educate the TA and contribute to the

knowledge that the TA has so when a TA

reads uh a 100 different student essays

the TA is also learning that

and guess what that then goes to

influence the professor as well uh and

so it becomes a cycle the professor then

publishes the result of what he or she

has been doing and it back into the

cycle it

goes so if we look at a real world

example of how this works here's one

piece of research this is an academic

piece of writing by David donaho there

okay so that's the author he has has

written this thing about the singularity

I keep looking into the AI Singularity

here because I want to know what it is

so he's written about it and uh

following below this is his essay his

research findings and at the end is his

references section and we see other

people who have written about similar

topics ball Barrett Benson and so on now

this is a references section for us

we'll have a works cited section instead

of the references section but it's

almost the same thing so before donaho

there was ball and Barrett and Benson so

remember ball and remember Dono because

we want to come back here and fill in

some of this with real life examples so

let's take this professor here and we'll

say that's donaho right there in the

cycle and before he did his before he

presented his writing he read ball for

example and now I am cripping I am now

reading donaho so let's imagine I have

read donaho and then I write something

about artificial intelligence then the

next person can be influenced by what I

write and so on so this is how the Cycle

Works in real

life we could simplify it and just kind

of get rid of a lot of the uh the

apparatus of the whole university and

just look at one course like the course

that we're in right now there are

undergraduate students and there's a

professor right and you have to write

these essays about for example AI you do

research and we have multiple people as

a class doing research then that goes to

me I read what you wrote I get new

information from you sometimes I get new

ideas also and I read a 100 essays I'm

learning a lot about AI from

undergraduate students okay so I

probably know a lot more than the

average person about AI why because of

my students because of you that's why

you did research I read your research I

found new ideas from what you did okay

so then what happens then I go and

influence the students right I give

assignments I talk about Ai and it this

is just another cycle within this

greater cycle of the academic machine

and it keeps going around and around it

never ends it produces more and more

research with the goal of getting closer

to the truth that's why we keep doing

this is we're trying to get closer to

the truth and when our mind uh fits the

actual reality the material physical

reality of the world it makes life

easier for us that's why we want to get

closer to the

truth so that makes the work cited page

all the more important remember Dono had

the references section we have the work

cited section we're using MLA format

it's just about the same but these names

bestof Farmers Insurance Group hany it

someone can come along and use those to

continue research and when you put these

in your essay then someone can use your

essay as a research tool that's what

we're trying to do here so the work

cited page is very important to what

we're doing when I was in uh when I was

an undergraduate in college I didn't

think this part was important at all I

didn't think about it but now I

understand that it is and with AI it's

more and more

important so to do academic research

rather than just doing internet research

using a search engine like Google or by

do you want to use uh databases academic

databases probably from your University

School library so here's an example of a

University Library website and all the

databases it has you see up at the top

of of the uh page here a toz databases

and then notice there are

744

databases um I only know about four of

them they're

740 I have no idea what they are so it's

too many databases for me actually but

we only need to know a few main ones

that'll definitely be enough for our

purposes uh so I want to point out Jore

which I've mentioned previously in one

video you see up in the corner there jst

o r people just say d j store this

essentially works like a Google search

engine internet search engine um except

that normally it costs a lot of money to

use this one you need a subscription so

usually it's University libraries that

have it J store now does have a public

website so we can use this one without

paying anything and but it uh the search

result are academic essays so you see

there in the search bar I typed in AI

Singularity then I did a search so let's

see what the results look like it looks

almost the same as uh an internet search

engine would one a public search engine

we get a bunch of links and one thing

important to notice about these links is

the option to download things so if we

can download the full text and read the

entire thing that's useful for us if

there's no download we can't read it so

it's not useful so the first thing we

want to notice is which one of these

things have the option for download

right and then as you're going through

them browse many links look up and down

at the titles of 20 different pages

don't just choose the first one and open

it and then read what's there for 30

minutes and then go back to the second

link and open it and read what's there

for 20 minutes don't do that way just

look up and down 20 different links

whichever ones look the most interesting

first look at those first and then after

you've chosen some that are good and you

you decided to ignore some that are not

good open more than one those good ones

open multiple Links of those and again

just browse don't start reading the

first one for 30 minutes right

now one thing you can do now that we

have chat GPT so powerful is you can

upload the PDF file after you download

it you can upload it into chat GPT and

ask chat GPT to help you review it so

look up here at the prompt I gave to

chat GPT 40 I uploaded that file that we

were looking at the first one with this

instruction could you summarize the

content of this PDF for me please I'm

researching Ai and Singularity for a

college

essay and so then chat GPT gives me

these results here and as I'm looking at

the results I find out okay this is

about the Israeli Defense Forces it's

about the army of Israel using AI it

doesn't sound very interesting to me I

just look at it a little bit as we look

down I see number six though looks in

interesting recommendations for

addressing AI Singularity because my

topic was Singularity right so possible

solutions I look there at that and then

one of them looks interesting actually

it says incorporating AI based surprises

into training scenarios to prepare

commanders and staffs for new types of

threats so that's kind of a new idea

actually I guess I would have thought of

it eventually but I hadn't thought of it

so far is one way to prepare for

problems from AI is to imagine problems

from Ai and create some surprise

problems so if we're trying to prepare

for bad things that can happen with AI

we could basically gameplay them now

make up a bunch of problems and and do

sort of games to figure out how we

should best respond to them so I I don't

think that I want to read this essay too

much I'm not going to uh spend a half an

hour reading it but I did get a new

thought just by this process here and

that's helpful too so what you can do

even if you're not going to read all of

these things is build in annotated

bibliography now there are formal ones

like this MLA annotated bi bibliography

and you may need to do one for your

course right um and then if you a formal

one someone else can come and and look

at your annotated bibliography and just

use it almost like a map for their

research they see the record of your

research and then they can go and

continue research from there but you can

also do an informal annotated

bibliography just writing by hand on

some paper taking notes on all of the

different things that you've looked at

just like that one about the Israeli

Army just now just write it down and

make sure you can find it again for your

own purposes uh when later in research

it's time for you to come back and

figure out what you're going to write

down so this also makes the Intex

citations all the more important when

you're writing your paragraphs and

you're including quotations in your

paragraphs uh academic writing puts

extra emphasis on including the source

that's the source name there Wordsworth

and the page number is

263 um this is very important in

academic research in fact it's totally

necessary and you could end up getting a

grade of 60 or zero if you don't

properly document your

sources so I'm going to stop here with

this video um just be sure to do your

research first writing second because

that's the nature of the University

that's what we're learning here among

other things but it's also the fastest

way and the the easiest way to get to

the truth and the truth makes life

easier for all of us all right I'm going

to stop here for today until our next

video take care everyone