Embarrassing AI #61: Still Unreliable as Research Assistant

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he spring semester has just started at college even though it feels more like hell is about to freeze over. When did I sign up for this? There are 14-18 inches in my future waiting to round off this coming weekend.

Started with research for my masters thesis.

Seemed like a perfect opportunity to give my good old AI research assistant another opportunity to redeem itself.

Armed with much better instructions, clear admonitions about telling porkies, and a defined, limited scope of assignments, I was ready for things to be different.

Sigh.

All I wanted was the ship my subject came in on, and references so that I could quote my sources.

Fabulations, fabrications, untruths, all very confidently delivered as if they were true.

Mind you, the 🤖 has been fantastic at helping me interrogate sources I have already found. I now feed it every text I read and ask it to find me connections between one and the other. It’s exceptional at being a second brain for what I already know.

But I want help finding new stuff. I wish it could read microfilm for me to deal with all those newspaper archives that haven’t been digitized yet. Once you get used to Boolean search you can never go back.

Alas, I’ll have to wait a couple more weeks and see if it’s gotten any better.

I (want to) believe.

A time traveling mystery when it looked like the American born sister of Louis Danzig seemed to have been born before her arrival in the US.

And a solution when I located the Ellis Island records.

Tools I am using to fake being an expert.

1. Beehiiv (The Platform)

"I tried other platforms, but Beehiiv is the only one that makes growth feel like a game. It’s what runs this newsletter. The Deal: You get a free trial + 20% off (I get a commission to keep the lights on)."

2. Wispr Flow (The Time Saver)

"I hate typing. This tool turns my rambling voice notes into perfect text. It’s the only way I can write this much every day. The Deal: We both get a free month if you try it."

3. Emergent (The Coding Cheat)

"I am not a coder. Emergent is my 'vibe coding' partner that writes the messy parts for me. Essential if you want to build apps without a CS degree."

🧘‍♂ Last Word.

I was listening to a podcast where someone had vibe coded critical software for his business who said that as long as you know how to test it and talk to the machine like a tester to a programmer, you’ll be good.

QA is king.

Making daily progress,

P.S. Did I do something totally backwards today? Or do you have a better prompt for this? Hit reply and tell me. I’m here to learn just as much as you are. (I read every single email).