AI has wound up being a great search engine, but fact checking... >_>

My current situation is that I'm trying to look up chemical reactions that cause a specific effect. (I promise this is for a short story >_>).

And what's great is that it actually compiled a good amount of possible material combinations that will do what I want, even if I would have to exaggerate a bit

But I don't want to be some doof who just assumes AI is telling the truth and then look like a fool when I put it into my story and then those things don't actually work like that at all. So now I'm at the "google the AI results to see if there's any truth to them" stage and trying to parse a bunch of science lit just trying to figure out "do these two substances behave even somewhat similarly to the effect I'm hoping to use in my story" while simultaneously hoping I don't get put on a watch list. <_<

I'm not super anti-AI, but super duper fuck the AI search result.

So what you're saying is you're doing twice as many searches to get what you want as previously.

That's why Google loves this tech.

Intro2Logic posted...

So what you're saying is you're doing twice as many searches to get what you want as previously.

That's why Google loves this tech.

"I need to find possible combinations of commonly available substances that will react with each other to cause a specific outcome" isn't something that would be easily searchable without a pre-existing education in chemical science, or if some maniac already thought of that specific problem and made the list themselves.

AI gave me 5 usable leads with one search and now I've got a focused framework to follow up on.

It's still far less legwork required to do the research. >_>

Good on you for not taking what the AI says at face value, but depending on the nature of the short story exaggerating the effect often is 'good enough' if you're worried about making the wrong impression about what you're searching for (heck, introducing a Chemical X to make the 'desired result' happens would probably make it better anyway).

I'm sure AI as a whole will improve but its not there yet. I just asked it to help me rediscover a game, it listed a few that it thought might be what I was looking for. When I said those weren't it, it listed a few more except it literally just made up some titles and descriptions. Like seriously how would that help me?

Amakusa posted...

Good on you for not taking what the AI says at face value, but depending on the nature of the short story exaggerating the effect often is 'good enough' if you're worried about making the wrong impression about what you're searching for (heck, introducing a Chemical X to make the 'desired result' happens would probably make it better anyway).

Normally I'd just make something up wholesale, but in this case I had already figured out most of how I want the story to go, and was looking for details to add a light sense of realism. (It was a basic "accidental reaction is discovered, then later weaponized" kind of deal. How the monster is defeated is ultimately not the point of the story, but I needed to kill it somehow in a way that tied to the themes I'm establishing earlier)

The irony in this case is that my original scene for the discovery seems to still work...just not for the reason I had made up initially. So I kind of went around in a circle, lol.