I have selected to research the topic that I am currently working on in Rhet1020. And my research question is: RQ: “How capitalism reframes feminism, commodifies women, reshapes workplaces, and undermines family roles, while shaping youth perceptions?”

For conducting my Rhet1020 paper, I have looked for my primary sources using the traditional method by searching Google Scholar by typing the keywords for the specific theme I want a source for. For example, typing (Feminism___Capitalism______Commodification___Neoliberalism___Workplaces exploitation___Pink tax___etc). I did not prefer to use AI because I was not familiar with AI research tools till I did this assignment; therefore, I was always thinking that AI would give me irrelevant or generic sources that do not support my research genre. And this is exactly what happened when I tried to use the usual ChatGPT in finding relevant primary sources. It used to give me unrelated sources or irrelevant sources, or simply say “I did not find relevant sources for your point here”. Thus, the journey of conducting my research and finding credible, relevant sources was harsh and challenging. When I was using Google Scholar in finding sources by typing certain keywords, it sometimes gave me irrelevant results or even secondary sources that do not meet my professor’s requirements. I have spent days staying up late just to find relevant sources and even read them to make sure about their relevance to my topic, because I also do not trust AI’s summaries for articles. Therefore, I will assess ChatGPT’s deep research and Perplexity’s deep research after using them in my research and give detailed feedback on my experience using them.

ChatGPT Deep Research

I first asked ChatGPT to find primary relevant sources that support my research question and pasted the research question to it. It was answered by asking for clarification on some points, just to be able to find sources based on my preferences. It asked me about the discipline of my topic, the time period I am examining, and what types of academic sources I am interested in. After giving it the required information, it answered with 17 relevant sources, including online articles and PDFs, and they were exactly relevant to my topic, which surprised me. Then I asked it to summarise the key findings of the articles, and it provided me with summaries for each article; however, there were too basic summaries that do not exactly cover the information mentioned in the articles. Although the sources exactly match my topic, AI did not help me in investigating the content of the articles quickly because it is not efficient in summarising key findings from an article.

Perplexity Deep Research

As previously done, I first started by asking it about providing me with primary relevant sources for my topic and pasted the research question for it. And it directly provided me with over 100 relevant sources. Although I was unable to check them all, the ones I have checked were primary and relevant to the genre of my research. Honestly, Perplexity was more advanced than ChatGPT’s deep research, as it not only provided me with the sources directly, but it also divided the sources into sections based on each theme of my research question. Then, when I asked it to summarise only 3 sources from the provided ones previously and state their methodology and key findings, it perfectly summarised the sources with their key findings and methodology, reflecting high efficiency in research.

Reflection on the whole process

I now feel a deep sense of regret for not using such advanced AI tools since the start of the semester in my research, as I assume that if I used these tools in finding sources for my research, it would save time and get exactly matching sources for my discipline. In addition, I highly recommend that professors be flexible and expert in such tools to enhance the research process, as using such tools carefully will save time not only for students but also for great scholars and leave enough time for them to focus on the methodology of the research itself. Finally, I feel grateful for having this assignment as it helped me explore AI tools that I was not familiar with and helped me overcome my stereotype towards AI and look at it from a different angle. I also learned that AI is not limited to traditional tools like the usual ChatGPT or Gemini, there are more advanced and stronger tools that are specialised in certain fields.

https://chatgpt.com/share/693477ba-5ce8-8007-bd77-fa535eaff342 https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-want-to-conduct-a-research-a-VBU7BQyCT22mCOTwG8C2gQ#0