Use AI to assist with reading

Author：JimmyWong

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The Problem

Recently, I have been maintaining the habit of reading academic papers. A friend recently asked me privately how I read papers, and I found this question very interesting, so I am here to share with everyone.

When reading papers, we often encounter the following problems:

• The content of the paper is quite specialized, and there are unfamiliar terms. If it is an English paper, you may need to consult a dictionary for these specialized terms.
• The paper is written in a relatively obscure manner and is difficult to understand.
• There is not enough time to read so many papers.

My approach is to first use AI tools to assist in reading papers, and then write notes. Additionally, this method is not only applicable to reading papers, but also applicable to reading other books and articles.

Solution

First of all, I usually use the AI Paper Express (Chinese Version) to read papers. This website automatically fetches the latest papers from arXiv, translates the titles using AI, and also provides summaries using AI. Just by taking a glance at the Chinese titles and summaries, you can quickly grasp the main content of the paper.

When I come across interesting content, I will go to read the original paper. If there is anything I don't understand, I usually use AI for translation. Since I have developed an AI tool myself, I usually use my own product - PoleStar Chat. The operation is quite simple. First, select the content you need to translate, then press the shortcut keys cmd + c + c. This will bring up the shortcut input box of PoleStar, and the content you selected will also appear in the input box. Finally, choose the corresponding translation bot, press enter, and you will see the AI translation result. The whole process does not require any additional prompt, very convenient and fast.

Please check the video.

In addition, apart from translation, another function I often use is "explanation". For example, when I come across technical terms that I don't understand, or sentences that are difficult to comprehend, I ask AI to provide explanations in Chinese. For instance, if the conclusion of a research paper is difficult to understand, I would ask AI to explain it in Chinese, using simpler language that even elementary school students can understand. Like this:

For the last question "no time to read," many friends think of using AI to summarize papers or articles:

• AI doesn't know what is important, so by only reading its summary, you may lose some important information.
• Without reading the full paper, you can't determine if the summary generated by AI is accurate.

So I don't recommend using AI to summarize papers. However, this doesn't mean that you can't speed up your reading using AI.

First, for papers, I suggest:

• Translate the abstract directly, so you can quickly understand the main content of the paper. If you are interested, then decide whether to read the full paper.
• Then, let AI translate the last part of the paper, the conclusions. This way, you can quickly understand the paper's findings. I usually take notes after reading the conclusions. If I don't understand the results or I'm curious about the research process, then I will go back and read the middle part of the paper.

After reading my methods, you may think that I am too utilitarian or shallow.

Honestly, I also thought this way at first, that this method wasn't good enough or deep enough. But later, I realized:

• It's difficult to learn in-depth knowledge solely relying on AI papers. To understand the details, it's still better to study systematically through books or tutorials.
• The development of AI is very rapid. The role of papers is to keep me informed and discover potential opportunities, not to deeply understand the technology itself (besides, the new technologies mentioned in papers may not be applicable immediately).

So, don't dwell too much on the depth issue. Instead, let AI act as a filter to help you eliminate what you're not interested in. Moreover, many papers aren't worth reading, so there's no need to be overly concerned or anxious.

Prompt

Translation:

I request you to act as a English translator, spelling corrector, and improver. 
I will communicate with you in any language, and you need to identify the language, translate it into English, and provide the corrected and improved version. 
Please note that you can only reply with corrections and improvements, and do not provide explanations. 
The following is the content that needs to be translated: 

Explanation:

Please explain XXX, so that even elementary school students can understand it.