[HN Gopher] Show HN: Research AI - AI Writing Assistant
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: Research AI - AI Writing Assistant
        
       Author : Mavlonbek1
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2021-10-03 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (researchai.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (researchai.co)
        
       | Y_Y wrote:
       | Didn't see any examples or interactive demo of the main product.
       | The did have something to generate cover letters though.
       | 
       | > This is Johnson Smith, writing to ask to work as a seasonal
       | employee for Enron. I am currently available, and I think I would
       | be a good fit for your position. You said you were looking for
       | somebody with "strong Linux Unix skills," so I am qualified. I am
       | mainly self-taught, not having taken any college classes, but I
       | am an avid learner, and I am comfortable using free resources to
       | teach myself the skills I need to reach my goals. I worked as a
       | software engineer at IBM for 8 years, primarily on laser sharks."
       | I am sure you will find that I am not just trying to fulfill a
       | need, but that I am qualified for this position.
       | 
       | I'm not particularly impressed by the output.
        
         | sva_ wrote:
         | Did you see the video? https://researchai.co/#how-it-works
        
           | Y_Y wrote:
           | No, I'm sure it's informative, but I don't normally watch
           | videos as a way of evaluating products like this because
           | they're rarely a good use of time, and I don't trust them to
           | give an accurate portrayal. I much prefer to play with a
           | demo.
        
           | deepspace wrote:
           | The video comes across as boring and amateurish. Far too many
           | pauses and "uhms and aahs". The heavy accent of the narrator
           | is also distracting. I would expect a video showcasing a
           | professional language tool to be way more polished and
           | narrated by someone speaking perfect English.
        
         | moffkalast wrote:
         | Well it's widely known that Dr. Evil outsourced his sharks with
         | laser beams to IBM, that makes sense to me.
        
       | scott-smith_us wrote:
       | Maybe it's just me, but...
       | 
       | When you're writing anything non-trivial, you ought to have
       | something new and/or interesting to say, otherwise you're just
       | adding noise to the environment.
       | 
       | I can see this being useful in finding ways to rephrase things,
       | improving the structure or flow of a document. But this seems to
       | be suggesting _content_ rather than form or format. Adding
       | content to your writing because it commonly appears in writing
       | similar to yours seems to go against the idea of new and
       | interesting.
       | 
       | That may be good for politicians, but I can see this being
       | misused to 'bulk-up' a small number of ideas or facts into a full
       | paper. On balance, this could easily do far more harm than good.
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | It will get harder and harder to find actual quality content
       | online, I guess. One might think that perhaps at some point there
       | would be the other side of this - an AI reading assistant that
       | filters through tons of filler texts like the ones generated by
       | this app. It'd have to be very personalized though, because else
       | the content creation algorithms would just be trained on them...
       | 
       | Or perhaps the inflation of filler text content will make people
       | only refer to their trusted sources - well established publishing
       | authorities.
        
         | deepspace wrote:
         | I think scam product review sites already make heavy use of
         | content generators like this. It is so frustrating to click on
         | a "review page" for a product and, after a couple of
         | paragraphs, realize that what you are reading is just
         | grammatically correct word salad, with no real meaning.
        
       | tasogare wrote:
       | Very nice tool for producing blog spam content. No proof or
       | explanation is given on why it could work for any meaningful
       | writing task (let's say research since that the name of the tool)
       | whatsoever.
        
       | threatofrain wrote:
       | Anyway you might unveil a taste of your product's capabilities
       | without a credit card? Also, if successful, I wonder what this is
       | going to do to high school English classes.
        
       | csw-001 wrote:
       | For the purposes of actual "research" pin citation is critical -
       | you can't just take somebody else's ideas or words without
       | attribution. If the AI is pulling in ideas and text from other
       | places that needs to be traceable. Does this provide citation
       | management for where the original content is coming from?
        
       | chriotte wrote:
       | Looks very impressive from your video! What is running it behind
       | the scenes? GPT-3? ParlAI?
       | 
       | This is a service I would love to use, but I'd like to have a
       | free taster before committing my payment details. I know you do a
       | 7-day trial, but at least, for me, there is a big barrier to
       | commit my card details to a random service. Maybe worth taking
       | inspiration from Grammarly by offering a limited free service to
       | get people hooked? Or even letting people sign up for the 7 day
       | trial before giving a way payment details?
        
       | wunderflix wrote:
       | I was dumb enough to sign up... The results are not impressive at
       | all.
       | 
       | Now they have my CC number. There is no way to cancel your
       | account. There is just a gmail support email... Let's see if I
       | get my $14.99 back.
        
         | omarhaneef wrote:
         | I was tempted to check it out so thanks for trying it out.
         | 
         | Is it basically just GPT3?
        
       | IshKebab wrote:
       | > Research AI generates original text based on your input, so you
       | can be assured about originality.
       | 
       | Somehow I am not assured.
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | > Research AI generates original text based on your input, so you
       | can be assured about originality.
       | 
       | This is impossible to guarantee with current language-generating
       | model technology, and will likely make IP lawyers salivate and
       | review boards cringe. (case in point, the recent GitHub Copilot
       | outputing-unique-code-verbatim snafus)
       | 
       | Not even OpenAI guarantees that generated output from GPT-3 is
       | original, just that _they_ won 't enforce copyright.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-10-03 23:00 UTC)