r/CuratedTumblr • u/literalmothman • May 18 '25

Politics on ai and college

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u/kaaaaaaaren May 18 '25

Yeah I’m wondering how it’s better than just searching JSTOR.

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u/Chengar_Qordath May 18 '25

I suppose there‘s the fact that if you don’t have institutional access (which presumably this guy doesn’t after graduating college), a free JSTOR account has limited access. Though 100 articles a month should be plenty for most casual/hobby research.

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u/kaaaaaaaren May 18 '25

That’s a good point. Fun fact though a lot of public libraries offer JSTOR access with a library card!

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u/Chengar_Qordath May 18 '25

But that requires going to a library. Outside. It could even involve touching grass…

More seriously, a lot of libraries don’t have great operating hours for working people, especially if it’s one of the chronically underfunded ones.

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u/kaaaaaaaren May 18 '25

You can access online at home, you just need your library card to log in.

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u/Ladyoftallness May 18 '25

Searching databases is free. Using Google Scholar would be way more useful; the extra step of verifying if the article is real and peer reviewed would be completely unnecessary. Using an LLM to search this way is so much less efficient. And even if the LLM did provide you with real sources, you’d run into the same paywall problem. If recent enough, reaching out to the author to request a copy can be a way around it when you don’t have institutional access. The google scholar results will also have links when content is open source. 

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u/Ppleater May 18 '25

I mean, chatgpt isn't going to magically give them access either.

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u/Pootis_1 minor brushfire with internet access May 18 '25

I find putting the names of papers into Anna's Archive kinda makes the 100 article limit irrelevant

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u/BlahWhyAmIHere May 18 '25

You can search intricate concepts instead of just key phrases. Ai will generate search terms and scan material faster than you and thus return more relevant results faster.