Did you know that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day? This is equivalent to 10 million Blu-ray discs, which, when stacked, would be as tall as two Eiffel Towers combined. It's mind-boggling, isn't it? In 2021, around 278,108 petabytes of data were transferred over the Internet per month – that's about 71 billion full-length HD movies. Every second, over 3 million emails are sent, with 67% being spam. Worldwide, we share more than 41 million WhatsApp messages daily.
The Problem
This deluge of information poses significant challenges for knowledge professionals and students. Desk research has become inefficient; search engines bombard us with links that often don't answer our questions, while chatbots, though quick, can provide unverifiable information.
Consider this: reading the first 20 links from Google or Bing to find the insight you need and comparing sources can easily take 30 minutes. Answers from ChatGPT or Gemini are swift but can be unreliable, lengthy, and hard to verify. While chatbots are amazing for brainstorming and content generation, they fall short for in-depth research.
So, how can we navigate this information overload effectively?
4 Tips Better Online Research with AI-based Assistants
In an ideal world, you would have a research tool to help navigate this data deluge. But what should such a tool provide? A good AI-powered research assistant should combine the strengths of search engines and chatbots while mitigating their weaknesses. Here’s what to look for.
Tip 1: Filtering external and internal Information
Look for a tool that filters relevant information from the web and your personal documents. With so much information available, it's crucial to have a tool that can sift through the noise and deliver what truly matters.
Imagine you're a marketing professional researching the latest trends. Your client has shared a dozen reports and consumer research studies with you. Instead of wading through this, your AI assistant filters out the fluff, answers your questions based on the data and does a web search. It then presents you with a few pertinent studies and reports that your client had missed. This saves you time and ensures you can focus on high-quality analysis of the data.
Tip 2: Provide Concise, Verifiable Answers
Choose a tool that provides concise answers to any question, based on verifiable data. Accuracy and brevity are key. You need a tool that can quickly give you verifiable answers that are short and to-the-point.
For example, as a student working on a research paper, you need quick, reliable data. An AI-powered assistant that provides concise answers with verifiable sources allows you to gather facts efficiently, leaving more time for analysis and writing. That way you are not outsourcing your cours work to an AI, buit have more time for where you add the most value and learn the most.
Tip 3: Offer Multiple Perspectives
Ensure the tool you choose reduces the risk of misinformation by offering multiple perspectives through various answers, without proclaiming one absolute truth. Having access to multiple viewpoints prevents biases and gives a well-rounded understanding of any topic.
For a journalist, consultant or advisor, understanding different sides of a story is crucial. An AI assistant that offers multiple perspectives helps you write balanced articles, reports and presentations - enhancing your credibility and the quality of your work.
Tip 4: Boost Team Collaboration
Look for a tool that enhances team collaboration, no matter where you are. In today’s remote working environment, seamless collaboration tools are essential for productivity and innovation.
In a company setting, a team working on a project can use an AI research assistant to share findings. Ideally, you can do joint research sessions where everyone can contribute and view results of the entire team, regardless of their geographical locations. This boosts efficiency and fosters team productivity, as everyone benefits from everyone's work on the common project.
Conclusion
In sum, a tool to help you do better online research should integrate information from the web and your own documents, provide concise and verifiable answers, offer multiple perspectives and help you work with your team.
Sokrateque is a tool that fits the bill. It is an AI-powered research assistant that bridges the gap between search engines and chatbots, boosting your creativity and leveraging your intelligence. It provides concise, verifiable answers from the web and your personal documents, offering multiple perspectives without effort, and much more. A good AI-powered research tool makes you more productive than ever before and most importantly: it brings the fun back to discovery.
