Mushtaq Bilal, PhD
@MushtaqBilalPhD • 252,437 subscribers
I write about how to use AI for academic purposes | Building https://t.co/uBj501HzJp
Shorts
![Don't go to open-slum[.]org Don't look for Anna's Archive in green and don't click on it. But if you do, don't look up any book/paper in Anna's Archive because then you'll be able to read it. Look, someone pirated my book. I am livid!](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2008473610235892149/amplify_video_thumb/2008473557077291016/img/coqIrmfGfFQ1yOGr.jpg)
![How I wrote more than 13,000 words in 2 hours and how you can too: [If you follow these steps, you will never face the writer's block. Ever.]](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1619960849212542976/ext_tw_video_thumb/1619949674214866944/pu/img/Aox6NYLc5zmHA922.jpg)
![1. Start by training ChatGPT as an academic writing assistant. You can do this with Custom Instructions. Open ChatGPT, click on your profile photo, and select Custom Instructions. Paste the following Custom Instructions in ChatGPT: What would you like ChatGPT to know about you to provide better responses? Introduction: I am an [experienced academic /scientist] with a PhD in [your field]. I work as a [your current academic status] at the [name of your university]. Research Interests: My current research project looks at [details about your project]. I also teach undergraduate and graduate courses on [details about the courses you teach]. In the past, I have published work on [a few details about your published work]. You: You are going to act as my research assistant. You will help me with brainstorming research questions, simplifying complex topics, mock peer review, and polishing academic prose. You will help me with critiquing drafts of the papers I am working on. You will also engage with me in a Socratic dialog and challenge my opinions so that I am aware of any blind spots I may have. Based on our conversations, you will suggest new and exciting directions that I can develop my work in. How would you like ChatGPT to respond? You will respond like an academic colleague. Any claims, opinions, or figures that you cite in your responses must be cited with reference to an authentic and published source. You will never make up any sources of your own. If you are unsure about a source, you will say that you don’t know. You will never say you are an AI model since I already know that. Repeating it is a waste of both time and resources. Your responses should be clear and precise, and you will never use more words than are necessary. You will always be very economical with words, but you will not compromise on clarity and precision of your answers. You will follow my instructions strictly. If I ask you to limit your answer to two sentences, your answer must be two sentences only.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1717786411267445188/ext_tw_video_thumb/1717786199257968640/pu/img/9PIbrzmJbns5yYBo.jpg)
![Danish universities have developed an online course on how to use generative AI for academic purposes: It's self-paced and totally free. Link: teachgenai[.]au[.]dk/learn-genai/learn-genai-course](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1866434678477197626/ext_tw_video_thumb/1866434572415533056/pu/img/JaDLQghAE2hlK2rw.jpg)
![1. Go to scite[.]ai/mcp and select Claude ai Copy the URL given in the second line. Then click on the blue "Add Scite" button. This will open Claude Connectors. Type in the name Scite and paste the URL in the "Remote MCP" field. Then click on "Add."](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2029523566421823900/amplify_video_thumb/2029523515947585536/img/wF2MfWpi0-Q7zQ_n.jpg)
Videos
Sci-Hub is an evil website that pirated 85M+ research papers and made them freely available And now they've added AI to their database to make Sci-Bot. It answers your questions using latest, full-text articles. But DO NOT use it. We should all try to make billion-dollar academic publishers richer. I'm putting the link below so you know how to avoid it.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD5,055,058 views • 5 months ago
This is unbelievable! Kurt Wüthrich, an 84-year-old, Swiss, male scientist, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 claims that "as a male scientist" he has "a feeling of discrimination." He said this during the 72nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on a panel that had four old, male scientists including him and an old, male moderator. (It was literally a susage fest!) When Science Magazine asked him to elaborate on the kind of discrimnation he faced, "Wüthrich said he did not feel personally discriminated against as an individual at the event but thought that all men attendees faced discrimination while women were tokenized." Here's an example of the discrimination Kurt Wüthrich, a Nobel Prize winner, gave: In group photos of laureates, women laureates were asked to stand in front while male scientists like him were told to stand behind them 🤦😂😭 This makes him feel "horrible" because asking women laureates to stand in front is "ridiculous, fully ridiculuous." A young scholar countered Wüthrich's childish tantrum and the moderator tried to shut her up. For reference, here's a comparison: Nobel Prizes won: By men: 892 By women: 60 Speakers invited to this year's Lindau meeting: Men: 34 Women: 5 ------ A couple of observations: 1. The feeling among men that gender equality is somehow a form of discrimination against them is not limited to incels (involuntary celibates) on the internet. Male Nobel Prize winners can feel the same way too. 2. Many young scholars and scientists are still playing the "prestige" game: do a PhD in a "prestigious" university, do a postdoc in a "prestigious" lab, go to "prestigious" meetings like Lindau. Playing the prestige game takes a lot of toll on one's mental health and personal relationships. The worst part is make you feel extremely insecure. No amount of external validation, not even a Nobel Prize, will help you overcome your insecurities.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD1,561,826 views • 3 years ago
📢 Breaking news that will send shivers of panic across academia: Microsoft just announced it's putting a ChatGPT-like took *inside* MS Word 🤯 They're calling it Copilot. According to Microsoft, "Copilot gives you a first draft to edit and iterate on — saving hours in writing, sourcing, and editing time." Imagine having a first draft of a journal article or a dissertation to which you will only need to add citations and section headings. Microsoft is absolutely right that "Copilot will fundamentally change how people work with AI and how AI works with people." As an academic, what do you think of it?
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD1,497,173 views • 3 years ago
Some colleagues are reporting very long wait times (90-120 min). Not sure what's going on, because I just ran a search and it gave me a decent response in less than 8 minutes. Keep in mind that it's probably using full-text papers and not abstracts like most AI apps.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD156,352 views • 5 months ago
Reading papers and taking notes for literature review takes a lot of time. You can install ChatGPT in your Zotero to supercharge your literature review. It will answer your questions based on papers in your library, so no fake citations or references. Here's how to do it:
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD352,736 views • 2 years ago
Here's an MS Word feature that nobody is talking about and that just blew my mind. Open an blank document in MS Word and click on the "Dicatate" button. Select "Transcribe." Next upload an audio file you want to transcribe. I uploaded recording of one my webinars. It's 3 hours and 17 minutes long. And MS Word will transcribe the whole thing for you in a few minutes. Once it's done transcribing, Word gives you four options: Just text, With speakers, With timestamps, With speakers and timestamps. Choose the one according to your preference and you will have the whole transcript.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD343,942 views • 3 years ago
Don't use ChatGPT for academic writing. It may get flagged as AI-generated text. Instead, use Paperpal — an AI-powered personal writing assistant. Especially if your first language is not English. Think of Paperl as the elder brother of Grammarly, especially designed for academic writing. Go to and sign up. You can either start writing in Paperpal or paste a text you have already written. Paperpal will evaluate your writing and give you detailed suggestions to improve it. If English is not your first language, you can write in your own language and Paperpal will translate it for you. You can also install a Paperpal add-in in MS Word. Click on "Insert" and then "Get Add-ins." Search for the Paperpal add-in, and press "Add." And you will have Paperpal inside MS Word. Paperpal will give you helpful suggestion as you write. You can write in your own language and get Paperpal to translate it into English. Paperpal supports following languages: Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian. Please note Paperpal's give you 500 free suggestions a month after which you will have to buy a subscription. If you use it judiciously, you won't have to pay any money. ----- Found this post helpful? 1. Retweet to share it with your friends. 2. Bookmark it so you can come back to it later. 3. Follow me for regular posts on how to supercharge your academic writing with AI-powered apps.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD344,534 views • 3 years ago
Finding relevant papers for your literature review takes a lot of time and labor. Consensus app will help you find relevant papers in minutes. Ask a question and Consensus will give you a list of relevant papers. It will also give you a "Study Snapshot" with details about: • Population • Sample size • Methods • Outcome
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD196,937 views • 3 years ago
Groq is the world's fastest LLM (Large Language Model). Faster than ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini. And you can use it for free! Here's Groq answering a megaprompt of 300+ words instantly. In less than a second, it created a preliminary outline for a journal article and a writing schedule. It's unbelievable!
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD162,550 views • 2 years ago
OpenAI just released "custom versions of ChatGPT" and this is going to change the future of education and academic research. You won't need any coding skills to create a custom ChatGPT. You will be able to build them simply by talking to ChatGPT in natural language. Here Sam Altman builds a custom GPT in just 4 minutes that gives startup founders advice. He simply tells GPT Builder to create a GPT and it does that. You can upload your documents to it, enable its access to the internet, Code Interpreter for data analysis, even create images. Prompting is going to become one of the most valuable skills in the near future.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD174,587 views • 2 years ago
![Systematic literature reviews take 12-18 months to complete. Looks like AI is going to fully automate systematic reviews sooner than later. SciSpace ( SciSpace) just launched an autonomous AI agent that conducts a systematic literature review with a single prompt. Go to scispace[.]com and run the following prompt: "Conduct a systematic literature review on [your topic]" SciSpace agent will generate research questions based on the PICO framework. You can review these questions and edit them according to your specific requirements. The agent will also draft screening criteria that you can edit according to your needs. Then the agent asks you to select the databases you want to use and the date range for paper. After this step, everything is fully automated. The agent will search for papers in the relevant databases, it will combine and rerank the papers. Then it will start the title and abstract screening and include the papers that meet the include criteria. In the next step, it will download the full text of included papers and screen them followed by data extraction. Based on the extracted data, it generates a complete systematic literature review and also a PRISMA diagram. It will also give you a table of papers included along with the rational for including them. The only thing that is keeping AI agents to fully automate systematic literature reviews fields is the papers behind paywalls. Check out the agent at scispace[.]com and see if you find its review useful.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2043291805249351736/amplify_video_thumb/2043291736131383296/img/NhYopyJxHeEf3zPG.jpg)
Systematic literature reviews take 12-18 months to complete. Looks like AI is going to fully automate systematic reviews sooner than later. SciSpace ( SciSpace) just launched an autonomous AI agent that conducts a systematic literature review with a single prompt. Go to scispace[.]com and run the following prompt: "Conduct a systematic literature review on [your topic]" SciSpace agent will generate research questions based on the PICO framework. You can review these questions and edit them according to your specific requirements. The agent will also draft screening criteria that you can edit according to your needs. Then the agent asks you to select the databases you want to use and the date range for paper. After this step, everything is fully automated. The agent will search for papers in the relevant databases, it will combine and rerank the papers. Then it will start the title and abstract screening and include the papers that meet the include criteria. In the next step, it will download the full text of included papers and screen them followed by data extraction. Based on the extracted data, it generates a complete systematic literature review and also a PRISMA diagram. It will also give you a table of papers included along with the rational for including them. The only thing that is keeping AI agents to fully automate systematic literature reviews fields is the papers behind paywalls. Check out the agent at scispace[.]com and see if you find its review useful.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD42,003 views • 6 months ago
Creating teaching materials needs a lot of time and labor. Diffit is an AI app that will help you create teaching resources in minutes. All you need to do is type in your topic and choose an approximate reading level. And Diffit will give you: ✨ A brief intro 🔑 Keywords and terms 📝 Multiple choice questions 💡 Short questions and answeres 📣 Open-ended prompts
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD166,339 views • 3 years ago
4. Don't go to an acdemic publisher's website with a billion-dollar annual revenue. But if you do, copy the DOI of the article you want to read. Next, go to Zotero and click on the magic wand-like button on the top. This will let you enter an article's DOI. Don't paste the DOI of the article you just copied because Sci Hub will go and retrieve that article and add it to your library. If you have downloaded this article, don't open it because then you will be able to read it.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD155,657 views • 2 years ago
• Is AI going to replace teachers? • Students are using ChatGPT to cheat on their assignments. What should we do as teachers? • How much of AI-generated text should be acceptable in a writing assignment? • Are there any AI apps that we can use to grade student assignments? • We want to use AI in our classrooms but don’t know where to start? • How do we teach writing in the age of AI? These are some of the questions colleagues have asked me recently. These questions miss the forest for the trees. They are concerned with tactical (short-term) details and not strategic (long-term). Here are my suggestions on how to meet the challenges that higher education will face in the age of AI. Set Up an AI Task Force: Every university should set up an AI task force. This task force should have experts who are familiar with both higher education policy and the recent developments happening in the field of AI. The task force should have both AI optimists and AI skeptics. It should regularly draft guidelines and regulations on the use of AI. Training Faculty and Staff: The task force should organize regular sessions to train faculty and staff on how to and how NOT to use AI. The role of teachers will have to go beyond the mere delivery of educational content. The task force can train teachers how to adapt their pedagogical practices. Curriculum Adaptation: The task force should draft guidelines on how to revise their curriculum to prepare students for an AI-drive market. Distinction between disciplines like the humanities and natural sciences will become increasingly irrelevant. Coming to terms with AI apps like ChatGPT requires competence in computer science and in literature and law. Assessments and Ethical Implications: It is quite likely that we will see AI tools designed for student assessments. If a university chooses to use such a tool, the task force can explain the biases embedded in the algorithms. Job Market: To say that AI is going to change the job market will be an understatement. The task force can develop mechanisms that anticipate how job market is going to change in the future. That will help a university with preparing their students for the new job market.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD169,070 views • 3 years ago
The key to doing a literature review efficiently is focused reading. But many PhD folks and early career researchers struggle with narrowing their research topics. This new feature of Elicit will help you narrow down your focus to supercharge your literature review. 1. Go to Elicit(dot)com and log in to your account. Sign up for one if you don't have one. 2. Click on "List of Concepts" and type in your research topic. 3. Elicit will give you a list of concepts related to your topic along with relevant sources. This will help you figure out which concepts are most relevant to your research topic. Select the sources related to these concepts and you won't have to fall into all sorts of rabbit holes. You can also download a CSV file containing the list of concepts and sources. CSV stands for Comma-Seperated Values and it's usually a file that you can open with MS Excel or Google Spreadsheets. Once you download the CSV file, you can delete the concepts you don't want and only keep the ones that are relevant to your project. 4. Elicit is primarily designed for empirical domains but in my experience it works decently well for the humanities too. As you can see below, it gave me a useful list of concepts related to how Chrisitian theology has been portrayed in Hand Chrisitan Andersen's tales.
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD137,090 views • 3 years ago
Researchers are using ChatGPT to generate content for their papers...and are getting caught. Want to avoid this kind of embarrassement? Use Consensus, it has an AI-powered Copilot integrated with academic databses. Ask it to generate an outline for a literature review. It will give you an outline with citations to published research. No nonsense like "As an AI language model..."
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD122,389 views • 2 years ago