[HN Gopher] AI for Scientific Search
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AI for Scientific Search
Author : omarsar
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-07-03 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| mixedmath wrote:
| From the title, I had thought that this would be a new tool for
| searching science, such as searching the arxiv. But this is
| actually a survey.
|
| I quote the conclusion of the survey:
|
| ---
|
| In conclusion, rapid advancements in artificial intelligence,
| particularly large language models like OpenAI-o1 and
| DeepSeek-R1, have demonstrated substantial potential in areas
| such as logical reasoning and experimental coding. These
| developments have sparked increasing interest in applying AI to
| scientific research. However, despite the growing potential of AI
| in this domain, there is a lack of comprehensive surveys that
| consolidate current knowledge, hindering further progress. This
| paper addresses this gap by providing a detailed survey and
| unified framework for AI4Research. Our contributions include a
| systematic taxonomy for classifying AI4Research tasks,
| identification of key research gaps and future directions, and a
| compilation of open-source resources to support the community. We
| believe this work will enhance our understanding of AI's role in
| research and serve as a catalyst for future advancements in the
| field.
|
| ---
|
| I jumped at this because I'm a mathematician who has been
| complaining about the lack of effective mathematical search for
| several years.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| How do you view o3? I personally find it superior to google
| search almost always. Do you find that it often misses key
| references? (also mathematician)
| masterjack wrote:
| Have you found https://sugaku.net/ useful? It's focused on math
| research
| gavinray wrote:
| I was hoping for this to announce a tool for research.
|
| Anyone know of the best way to do something like:
|
| _" Find most relevant papers related to topic XYZ, download
| them, extract metadata, generate big-picture summary and entity-
| relationship graph"_?
|
| Having a nice workflow for this would be the best thing since
| sliced bread for hobbyists interested in niche science topics.
|
| Recently found https://minicule.com which is free and lets you
| search + import, but it focuses more on "concept-extraction" than
| LLM synthesis/summary.
| AustinBGibbons wrote:
| Check out https://elicit.com/
| gavinray wrote:
| Seems potentially useful, thanks! Only drawback I can see is
| the small number of papers provided by the free plan, but
| that's reasonable I suppose.
| hugeBirb wrote:
| I've been trying to tackle this exact problem. Current process
| is to use exa.ai to collect a wide breadth of research papers.
| Do a summarization pass and convert to markdown. Search for
| more specific terms then give the relevant papers/context to
| Gemini 2.5 pro and say give me a summary. Looking for _very_
| specific resources and to be honest it 's been a terrible
| process :|
| kianN wrote:
| Linking to a nearby thread in case this is helpful:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44457928
| dmezzetti wrote:
| PaperAI is also an option if you prefer open-source:
| https://github.com/neuml/paperai
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the primary author of this project.
| kianN wrote:
| I built a public literature review search tool for some
| graduate student friends that became pretty popular in the
| Santa Barbara area. It actually does exactly what you are
| describing.
|
| It's not neural network based: it leverages hierarchical
| mixture models to give a statistical overview of the data. It
| lets you build these analysis graphs via search or citation
| networks.
|
| Example:
| https://platform.sturdystatistics.com/deepdive?search_type=e...
| gavinray wrote:
| This is genuinely incredible, tried it using a recent-ish
| paper on the pharmacology and mechanisms of the Androgen
| Receptor and my mind is blown:
|
| https://platform.sturdystatistics.com/deepdive?fast=1&q=http.
| ..
| andjar wrote:
| A while ago, I started working on two R packages for creating
| 'living reviews': metawoRld and DataFindR, see
| https://andjar.github.io/metawoRld/articles/conceptual_overv...
| . You do the broad literature search yourself, but the idea is
| to use LLMs to select relevant studies and perform data
| extraction in a structured, reproducible manner. The extracted
| data is stored in a git repository for collaboration and
| version tracking, with automated validation and website
| generation for presenting results.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| "Structured and Reproducable"
| tkuipers wrote:
| I've found a lot of success with https://www.undermind.ai/
| though I'm not sure it has the graph you're looking for
| gavinray wrote:
| This also looks excellent, thank you!
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| Connectedpapers.com
| fabmilo wrote:
| I like zotero, I started vibe coding some integration for my
| workflow, the project is a bit clunky to build and iterate the
| development specially with gemini & claude. But I think that is
| the direction to take instead of reinvent from scratch something
| scientific_ass wrote:
| Was expecting a product I can try out. But still, not
| disappointed.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| AI for Scientific Search yes. LLM for Scientific Search I am not
| sure. AI is not equivalent with LLM. I dislike it when people do
| it.
|
| AI will have a brand crisis once LLMs get abandoned and
| researchers need to explain the public that the new AI (not LLM
| based) is different than the old AI (LLM based) which is
| different from the old AI (GOFAI)
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