What Deep Search & Deep Research Can & Can't Do

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Most current Academic Deep Search and Deep Research tools are workflow-based agents operating within predefined patterns—not flexible reasoning systems that analyze task structure and devise novel approaches. This doesn’t diminish their value. Academic Deep Search’s iterative retrieval with LLM-based relevance judgment is a genuine breakthrough. Deep Research’s ability to generate well-cited reports fills real needs. These tools ARE agents in the technical sense, and within their designed scope, they work impressively.  But marketing language suggesting flexible reasoning, autonomous problem-solving, and human-like research assistance probably overstates current capabilities and can lead to misunderstanding by users who take the term “agent” or “research assistant” at face value. - Aaron Tay

22 Articles about the Business of Running an AI Company

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These teenagers are already running their own AI companies – MSNBC

Explainable AI in Chat Interfaces – NN Group 

The Eerie Parallels Between AI Mania and the Dot-Com Bubble – Wall Street Journal

Senators Investigate Role of A.I. Data Centers in Rising Electricity Costs – New York Times  

An AI product’s position on the personality spectrum shapes how people engage with it – UX Design  

The Good, Bad and Ugly of AI - Wall Street Journal

The Architects of AI: Person of the Year 2025 – TIME  

Why AI's winners won't be decided by benchmarks – Axios  

Behind the Deal That Took Disney From AI Skeptic to OpenAI Investor - Wall Street Journal

Something Ominous is Happening in the AI Economy – The Atlantic

‘Circularity’ is a flashing warning for the AI boom Wall Street’s buzzword for investors - Washington Post

The New York Times sued Perplexity, an A.I. start-up, claiming that Perplexity repeatedly used its copyrighted work without permission. - New York Times 

A Prompt Engineering Framework for Large Language Model-Based Mental Health Chatbots – National Library of Medicine

ChatGPT started the AI race. Now its lead is looking shaky. - Washington Post 

A YouTube tool that uses creators’ biometrics to help them remove AI-generated videos that exploit their likeness also allows Google to train its AI models on that sensitive data – CNBC  

China's DeepSeek debuts two new AI models – Bloomberg  

A growing share of America’s hottest AI startups have turned to open Chinese AI models - NBC News  

Nvidia's massive investments are shaping the AI bubble debate – Axios  

Gemini is most ‘empathetic’ AI model, test shows - Semafor

A.I.’s Anti-A.I. Marketing Strategy - New York Times

Tech Titans Amass Multimillion-Dollar War Chests to Fight AI Regulation - Wall Street Journal 

Fears About A.I. Prompt Talks of Super PACs to Rein In the Industry - New York Times

AI Definitions: Small Language Models

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Small Language Models (SLMs) – Requiring less data and training time than large language models, SLMs have fewer parameters making them more useful on the spot or when using smaller devices. Perhaps the best advantage of SLMs is their ability to be fine-tuned for specialized for specific tasks or domains. They are also more useful for enhanced privacy and security and are less prone to undetected hallucinations. Google’s Gemma is an example.

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22 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

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AI makes human journalists more important than ever - Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

AI is changing the relationship between journalist and audience. There is much at stake – The Guardian

Google will look beyond volume journalism - Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

Why The Washington Post launched an error-ridden AI product - Semafor

The AI widgets taking over news sites and extracting our data. – Columbia Journalism Review

5 predictions for AI’s growing role in the media in 2026 – Fast Company 

News product teams are uniquely positioned to unlock AI value - Harvard’s Nieman Lab   

Google is experimentally replacing news headlines with AI clickbait nonsense – The Verge

In 2026, AI will outwrite humans - Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Journalist Caught Publishing Fake Articles Generated by AI – Futurism

Politico management violated key AI adoption safeguards, arbitrator finds – Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

Announcing our new AI partnership with Microsoft – Business Insider

Florida nonprofit news reporters ask board to investigate their editor’s AI use - Harvard’s Nieman Lab   

What the iconic writers of New Journalism can teach us in the AI era – Poynter

How an AI-mediated world transforms news consumption. – Columbia Journalism Review

The importance of independent media in the age of AI slop and algorithms. – The Verge  

Journalists may see AI as a threat to the industry, but they’re using it anyway - Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era – The Local

Mapping news creators and influencers in social and video networks - Reuters Institute

The Creator Journalism Trust and Credibility Toolkit: A guide for funders - The Lenfest Institute

10 ways I use AI to be a better journalist - Fast Company

How publishers can defend themselves against AI bots stealing journalistic content – The Fix

Shame cuts you down to size

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Shame is universal, but the messages and expectations that drive shame are organized by gender. These feminine and masculine norms are the foundation of shame triggers, and here's why: If women want to play by the rules, they need to be sweet, thin, and pretty, stay quiet, be perfect moms and wives, and not own their power. One move outside of these expectations and BAM! The shame web closes in. Men, on the other hand, need to stop feeling, start earning, put everything in their place, and climb their way to the top or die trying. Push open the lid of your box to grab a breath of air, or slide that curtain back a bit to see what's going on, and BAM! Shame cuts you down to size.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

26 Articles about AI & Academic Scholarship

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Librarians Dumbfounded as People Keep Asking for Materials That Don’t Exist - Futurism

Self-reflection enhances large language models towards substantial academic response – Nature 

Who Owns the Knowledge? Copyright, GenAI, and the Future of Academic Publishing – Arxiv 

AI reviewers are here — we are not ready – Nature  

More A than I: Testing for Large Language Model Plagiarism in Political Science – Political Science Now

Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’ – The Guardian

A new preprint server welcomes papers written and reviewed by AI – Science.org

Springer Nature retracts, removes nearly 40 publications that trained neural networks on ‘bonkers’ dataset – The Transmitter

Research Integrity in an Era of AI and Massive Amounts of Data – Sensible-med 

UK funding body “opens up grant proposal data to explore using AI to smooth peer review” – Chemistry World  

AI “Research” Papers Are Complete Slop, Experts Say – Futurism

AI use widespread in research offices, global survey finds – Research Professional News  

The Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions uses cover art that is AI generated – Neurodojo  

Will AI Write the Next "Chapter" in Literature Reviews? – JMIR

Researchers say their AI system can “deliver rigorous and constructive feedback on scientific manuscripts- The Scientist

How generative AI could make scientific publishing fairer, and more competitive – Science Business  

An MIT Student Awed Top Economists With His AI Study—Then It All Fell Apart. – Wall Street Journal

Scientific Writing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – JAMA 

Influence of Topic Familiarity and Prompt Specificity on Citation Fabrication in Mental Health Research Using Large Language Models: Experimental Study - JMIR

Elsevier unveils AI-assisted research workspace to speed up R&D – Fierce Healthcare 

A Researcher Made an AI That Completely Breaks the Online Surveys Scientists Rely On – 404 Media  

Research integrity conference hit with AI-generated abstracts – Retraction Watch 

More than 200 Korean papers retracted over AI use. - The Dong-A Ilbo

AI unreliable in identifying retracted research papers, says study – Retraction Watch 

This science sleuth revealed a retraction crisis at Indian universities – Nature  

Google Scholar Labs Uses AI to Transform Academic Research - TechBuzz

AI Glasses During Exams

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“What is to stop someone from sitting in the back of a classroom and whispering into their glasses to say, ‘Hey, I need help with solving this problem,’” said Luke Hobson, an assistant director of instructional design at MIT. “Every time I see someone saying, ‘Blue books are the future,’ I’m like, ‘So are we going to ban students from wearing glasses?’” -Inside Higher Ed

26 Recent Articles about AI & Teaching

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You Can’t AI-Proof the Classroom, Experts Say. Get Creative Instead. – Inside Higher Ed

Teachers are using software to see if students used AI. What happens when it's wrong? – NPR

Professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams – Washington Post 

I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse – New York Times

OpenAI Is Giving Teachers Their Own ChatGPT, Free Through 2027 - Newsweek 

How AI Is Changing Higher Education – Chronicle of Higher Ed  

AI-generated lesson plans fall short on inspiring students and promoting critical thinking – The Conversation

Universities are embracing AI: will students get smarter or stop thinking? – Nature

Is AI dulling our minds? Experts weigh in on whether tech poses threat to critical thinking, pointing to cautionary tales in use of other cognitive labor tools – The Harvard Gazette

Are we teaching students AI competence or dependence? - London School of Economics  

AI Has Joined the Faculty - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

To adopt or to ban? Student perceptions and use of generative AI in higher education – Nature

What are the clues that ChatGPT wrote something? - Washington Post

Stop Pretending You Know How to Teach AI - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Their Professors Caught Them Cheating. They Used A.I. to Apologize. - New York Times

Teaching Students to Think Critically About AI – Harvard Graduate School of Education

AI-powered textbooks fail to make the grade in South Korea – Rest of World  

More college students are using AI for class. Their professors aren't far behind – NPR

From Yale to MIT to UCLA: The AI policies of the nation's biggest colleges – Mashable

A researcher’s view on using AI to become a better writer – Hechinger Report  

I Want My Students’ Effort, Not AI’s Shortcut to Perfect Writing – Edsurge

AI-resistant strategies - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

What’s working, not on front lines of AI in classroom - The Harvard Gazette

AI Tutors Are Now Common in Early Reading Instruction. Do They Actually Work? – Edweek

Bridging pedagogy and technology: a generative AI and IoT approach to transformative English language education – Nature

Teaching: How to respond when students don’t want to work with AI - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

AI-powered Hacking

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In just the past several weeks, Google disclosed that hackers had used AI-powered malware in an active cyberattack, and Anthropic reported that its models had been used by Chinese state-backed actors to orchestrate a large-scale espionage operation with minimal human intervention. The greatest challenges facing the United States do not come from overregulation but from deploying ever more powerful AI systems without minimum requirements for safety and transparency. - Chuck Hagel writing in The Atlantic

AI Definitions: Circularity

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Circularity – As AI companies invest in each other, money flows in a circular fashion, from one company to another and then back again. In effect, they prop up one another’s finances, in a similar fashion to what was known as “round-tripping” during the dot-com years. The result is an inflated performance without creating profits. The hope is that this will change over time, while larger concern is that demand for AI’s new products might never catch up with the capacity the industry is building.

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All-or-nothing thinking

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I spend days at a time in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I could be doing but can’t because I know I would do them imperfectly. I lose countless hours to inner monologues filled with self-hatred and all-or-nothing thinking. I don’t read anything, instead preferring to slowly crush myself with the existential weight of knowing that I will never be able to read all the things.

For a very long time, I thought that I did this because I was lazy. I figured that if I just worked a little harder, tried a little more, then I would be able to accomplish the things I set out to do. Failing to do them was a failure of my character. It was because I was a bad person, or at least bad at being a person.

I told myself that I had to get my act together; I had to do all of these things so that I could prove I wasn’t the worthless piece of garbage I thought I was. When I inevitably cracked under that pressure, I took it as proof that I was a worthless piece of garbage.

If all of this sounds repetitive, that’s because it is. It’s a vicious, repetitive, monotonous cycle. It moves at breakneck speed, but also not at all. Experiencing it is the most damning case against perfectionism I have ever come across. Expecting perfection only leaves you with two options: do everything right on the very first try, or don’t even bother. Which is actually only one option, since 9 times out of 10, human beings don't do things right on the first try.

Jenni Berrett writing in Ravishly

AI Definitions: Large Language Models

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Large Language Models (LLMs) - AI trained on billions of language uses, images and other data. It can predict the next word or pixel in a pattern based on the user’s request. ChatGPT and Google Bard are LLMs. The kinds of text LLMs can parse out include grammar and language structure, word meaning and context (ex: The word green may mean a color when it is closely related to a word like “paint,” “art,” or “grass”), proper names (Microsoft, Bill Clinton, Shakira, Cincinnati), and emotions (indications of frustration, infatuation, positive or negative feelings, or types of humor).

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