AI in Research: What Faculty Need to Know Now

 

Computer Science Professor Melanie Moses, Research IT Manager Grace Faustino and Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science Humayra Tasnim led a discussion about the current state of AI in Research (as opposed to research on AI). They spoke about best practices when using existing tools, some of the potential pitfalls, and where things stand in terms of policies around AI in research and research administration at UNM and federally. They also demonstrated some uses for Notebook LM, Napkin.ai ChatGPT and more.

 

Resources discussed during the workshop

Tools for business processes

  • ChatGPT: useful for brainstorming, document drafting, non critical things (be sure to verify!)
  • Replit: build your own Apps 
  • Claude 3.7 for coding
  • Llama & Deep Seek for open source (these can run locally without uploading data)
  • AI agents

 

Tools for research

  • ChatGPT o1, 03, o1 pro Reasoning ($20/month) & Deep Research ($200/month)
  • Abacus.ai, a suite of AI tools that you choose from ($10/month)
  • Notebook LM for summarizing documents, videos and more
  • Scite.ai for literature searching (available free at UNM libraries)
  • Napkin.ai for visuals 

 

Three AI queries presenters ran through Deep Research: