Latest / Azadeh and Guy on AI / From Data Overload to Clarity
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_01: I do love podcasting.
- 0:03SPEAKER_01: This is all I have to say.
- 0:04SPEAKER_01: I do love podcasting.
- 0:05SPEAKER_01: So welcome to the Azadeh and Guy on AI,
- 0:08the show that explores how artificial intelligence is
- 0:11transforming research in
- 0:13SPEAKER_01: education and beyond.
- 0:14SPEAKER_01: I'm Guy.
- 0:15SPEAKER_00: And I'm Azadeh.
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: I'm a PhD student at UNL and Guy is my PhD advisor.
- 0:21And today we're really jumping into the way we think about AI
- 0:26in the research
- 0:27SPEAKER_01: workflow with a specific emphasis on qualitative analysis,
- 0:30SPEAKER_01: not because we think it's the most important thing,
- 0:32SPEAKER_01: but it's the thing we've been doing lately.
- 0:34SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot there, but before we get there,
- 0:38We really want to cover some of the new things we've been
- 0:41seeing around AI.
- 0:42SPEAKER_01: And there's lots of these.
- 0:44And there are publications every day and new models and
- 0:47everything coming out today
- 0:48SPEAKER_01: and yesterday and the day before.
- 0:50SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's literally a world that changes by the day.
- 0:53SPEAKER_01: But today we want to talk about...
- 0:58SPEAKER_01: Notebook.lm and the new feature in Notebook.lm.
- 1:00SPEAKER_00: That's very true, yes.
- 1:01We want to talk about Notebook.lm and its new feature,
- 1:06which is Video Overview,
- 1:08right?
- 1:09SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 1:10SPEAKER_01: So Notebook.lm is one of my favorites.
- 1:13SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of favorites.
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: That is true.
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: I was going to say, could you pick one of them?
- 1:19SPEAKER_01: No, I can't.
- 1:20SPEAKER_01: That's why I have four kids.
- 1:21SPEAKER_01: I have four kids because I can't pick just one.
- 1:23SPEAKER_01: I want to be able to say I'm excited about all of them.
- 1:27SPEAKER_01: And I am.
- 1:28SPEAKER_01: And so Notebook LM has been a product that came out last year.
- 1:33SPEAKER_01: We loved it from the moment it got out.
- 1:36SPEAKER_01: And we're not special.
- 1:37SPEAKER_01: I mean, Azadeh is special.
- 1:39SPEAKER_00: I'm not that special.
- 1:41SPEAKER_01: And as a result, many, many people loved it.
- 1:45And I think even the people who may not work LM when they were
- 1:48interviewed,
- 1:49SPEAKER_01: not by us yet,
- 1:50SPEAKER_01: but maybe if we get famous one day,
- 1:52SPEAKER_01: they'll come on our podcast,
- 1:55SPEAKER_01: really said that they were even surprised by how popular it became.
- 1:58SPEAKER_01: But it is a great little application of AI.
- 2:02SPEAKER_01: And the reason I loved it, it was immediately usable.
- 2:06SPEAKER_01: It was great for education,
- 2:09and it was a really good illustration of how AI can be useful
- 2:13in your life right
- 2:14SPEAKER_01: now.
- 2:15SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think the whole platform is very intuitive.
- 2:18SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've seen many people using Notebook LM.
- 2:21SPEAKER_00: The first time they opened the platform,
- 2:24SPEAKER_00: they just start using it,
- 2:26and they do not need to do a long training or something like
- 2:30that to understand all
- 2:31SPEAKER_00: of the features.
- 2:32SPEAKER_00: So it's, yeah, you're right.
- 2:34SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most favorite tools, AI tools.
- 2:37SPEAKER_01: And you can create lots of notebooks.
- 2:39SPEAKER_01: And in each one of the notebooks, you can bring some information in.
- 2:43SPEAKER_01: It can be audio.
- 2:44SPEAKER_01: It can be most people are bringing PDFs, especially in the beginning.
- 2:48SPEAKER_01: We were bringing text and being able to do a few things with the text.
- 2:52And the new thing is on top of having the ability to have a
- 2:57quiz or to have a chat
- 2:59SPEAKER_01: with the text,
- 3:00SPEAKER_01: which is kind of wonderful.
- 3:01You can ask it questions and it answers based on the text that
- 3:06you've provided.
- 3:07SPEAKER_01: And then it also provides notes for studying.
- 3:12SPEAKER_01: Again, great.
- 3:14SPEAKER_01: And we had this podcast feature that a lot of people loved.
- 3:18SPEAKER_01: And we were a little apprehensive about it.
- 3:20SPEAKER_01: It was both really interesting.
- 3:24And one time we listened as we were traveling across Nebraska,
- 3:28we were listening to a podcast.
- 3:30SPEAKER_01: And it was like, after a while, it gets repetitive.
- 3:33SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 3:33SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
- 3:34SPEAKER_00: And I remember that it mispronounced some of the key terms, actually.
- 3:40SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't without problems, which is a great way to explore AI.
- 3:44SPEAKER_01: We are never saying that AI is perfect.
- 3:46SPEAKER_01: It's just it has some affordances.
- 3:48And if listening is your thing,
- 3:50they really broke it down and they did all of these things.
- 3:52SPEAKER_01: So now they added this feature and you played with it a little bit.
- 3:55SPEAKER_01: So what does it look like?
- 3:58SPEAKER_00: I used it for checking some of the PDFs.
- 4:02SPEAKER_00: I mostly,
- 4:03SPEAKER_00: to be honest,
- 4:03SPEAKER_00: I prefer to read the papers myself,
- 4:08but sometimes I try the AI tools just because I want to see how
- 4:12their features work
- 4:13SPEAKER_00: and what are their capabilities.
- 4:16SPEAKER_00: So I think it's been really helpful.
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: I think I used this one time for summarizing a couple of papers,
- 4:23SPEAKER_00: and I was kind of happy with the quality of the results.
- 4:26SPEAKER_00: So it could be very helpful, yeah.
- 4:29And they really initiated that idea that you can take anything
- 4:34and everything and
- 4:34SPEAKER_01: turn it into a podcast.
- 4:36SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 4:38SPEAKER_01: is what they call, what do they call it?
- 4:40SPEAKER_01: Video?
- 4:41SPEAKER_00: Video overviews.
- 4:42SPEAKER_01: Video overviews.
- 4:43And so just so you're clear,
- 4:45I mean,
- 4:46we had expectations when we just heard about this.
- 4:48SPEAKER_01: It's like,
- 4:48SPEAKER_01: it's going to be this wonderful movie,
- 4:51SPEAKER_00: and it's going to have all of these characters.
- 4:53SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was really excited, yes.
- 4:55SPEAKER_01: And that's not exactly what it is.
- 4:57SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean we don't think it's awesome, because it is.
- 5:00SPEAKER_01: But it is basically PowerPoint.
- 5:04SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: So it creates a set of slides to go with the audio.
- 5:09SPEAKER_01: So you've got audio and a set of slides.
- 5:11SPEAKER_01: This is why I love it.
- 5:12SPEAKER_01: And it's exactly what you said.
- 5:14SPEAKER_01: And that is when you're reading hard texts,
- 5:18SPEAKER_01: listening is an okay strategy,
- 5:22SPEAKER_01: but it's actually less good than reading.
- 5:25SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 5:26Because in reading,
- 5:28there's,
- 5:28first of all,
- 5:28another way to get the information.
- 5:30So you're getting multimodal information if you are getting
- 5:34these overviews.
- 5:35SPEAKER_01: But more to the point, listening is linear.
- 5:38SPEAKER_01: That is, there's a beginning, middle, and end.
- 5:41And most of us are not stopping mid listen and moving it back
- 5:46and re-listening to
- 5:47SPEAKER_01: the last paragraph.
- 5:48SPEAKER_01: We don't actually know even where it is.
- 5:50SPEAKER_01: So if we miss something, we might do that.
- 5:52SPEAKER_01: But most of the time, people listen through.
- 5:54SPEAKER_01: And we know that when we're reading hard texts,
- 5:57SPEAKER_01: We're not reading through.
- 5:58SPEAKER_01: We were reading a sentence.
- 6:00SPEAKER_01: We're looking up a word.
- 6:02SPEAKER_01: We're clicking on something.
- 6:04SPEAKER_01: We're really grappling with the text.
- 6:06And again,
- 6:07an easy text,
- 6:08yes,
- 6:08listening to a podcast about murder,
- 6:10let's be honest.
- 6:12SPEAKER_01: All the podcasts that aren't mine are about murder apparently.
- 6:17SPEAKER_01: And when you're listening to a story, you're fine.
- 6:19SPEAKER_01: You can follow the story and you'll be fine.
- 6:22SPEAKER_01: But when it is a difficult text,
- 6:24it turns out that in our brains we're doing all of these
- 6:27strategies that allow us
- 6:28SPEAKER_01: to keep the meaning.
- 6:30SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we jump two pages backwards,
- 6:33SPEAKER_01: right,
- 6:34SPEAKER_01: to go,
- 6:34SPEAKER_01: wait a minute,
- 6:35SPEAKER_01: there was something there.
- 6:36SPEAKER_01: I need to go back to it so I can understand it.
- 6:38SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 6:39SPEAKER_01: In audio, you can do that as well.
- 6:41And I think that the overview bridges some of that by having
- 6:46visual text and some
- 6:49SPEAKER_01: kind of graphic representation.
- 6:50SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
- 6:51SPEAKER_00: It could be helpful.
- 6:52I mean,
- 6:54not very interesting because it's basically a PowerPoint with
- 6:57narration.
- 6:58SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 6:58SPEAKER_00: But, yeah, I can see some uses of that new feature in probably very...
- 7:07SPEAKER_00: I would say basic, yeah, applications of that kind of video, yeah.
- 7:13SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and let's put Notebook LM where it needs to be.
- 7:16SPEAKER_01: Notebook LM is not there to solve the problems of the world.
- 7:20It's really a study aid and a way to interrogate some text that
- 7:25we're grappling with.
- 7:26SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
- 7:27SPEAKER_01: It's not the end all and be all of everything,
- 7:29SPEAKER_01: but it is a way to get through some complicated text in an easier way,
- 7:35SPEAKER_01: in a way that,
- 7:36SPEAKER_01: again,
- 7:36SPEAKER_01: going back to the point you made before,
- 7:38what's great about it is the threshold of skill to get going is
- 7:43close to zero.
- 7:44SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
- 7:45SPEAKER_01: Which is true of many of the AI features out there.
- 7:48SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I loved about them,
- 7:49SPEAKER_01: and I think that's the reason that it caught on so fast,
- 7:53SPEAKER_01: is the interface was so easy.
- 7:55SPEAKER_01: You went to chat GPT and you typed something and you got an answer.
- 7:59SPEAKER_01: You didn't need to know anything.
- 8:01SPEAKER_01: We're starting to need to know something like…
- 8:04SPEAKER_00: Probably that's one of the reasons they are really popular.
- 8:07SPEAKER_00: You basically need no training or other thing to start working with them.
- 8:12SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
- 8:13SPEAKER_01: You get a result immediately.
- 8:14And that ability to get a result immediately is critically
- 8:17important for people to
- 8:19SPEAKER_01: sustain their interest and to say,
- 8:21SPEAKER_01: I don't need to know coding.
- 8:23SPEAKER_01: It's basically like working in Google.
- 8:25SPEAKER_01: We all know how to work Google.
- 8:27SPEAKER_01: This is similar.
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: It's not the same.
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: But if you know Google, you have enough to go.
- 8:32SPEAKER_01: And be able to do something.
- 8:33SPEAKER_01: So that's a celebration for today.
- 8:35SPEAKER_01: It's not a new feature.
- 8:36And by the time you hear this,
- 8:38it'll be probably an old feature,
- 8:40like two weeks old.
- 8:41SPEAKER_01: And that's in the AI calendar.
- 8:45Two weeks is like,
- 8:46I don't know,
- 8:48a hundred years,
- 8:48a century in development.
- 8:50SPEAKER_01: But we're still excited about it.
- 8:51SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 8:51SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is that you can rate the videos.
- 8:54SPEAKER_00: You can say good video or bad video.
- 8:56SPEAKER_00: So you are providing them with feedback.
- 8:58SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 8:59SPEAKER_01: So maybe they should pay us for using it.
- 9:01SPEAKER_01: But then again, we're getting it for free.
- 9:03SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
- 9:04SPEAKER_01: It's always, but we are retraining and training and retraining the...
- 9:10The AI world has been wondering about how do we get better
- 9:15without all of this vast
- 9:18SPEAKER_01: amount of data that we've already processed.
- 9:20So they've processed everything they could get their hands on
- 9:24legally and illegally.
- 9:25SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
- 9:28At this point,
- 9:29they're thinking,
- 9:30what are the solutions to keep improving?
- 9:31And one of the solutions is obviously looking at the queries we
- 9:37make and what do we
- 9:38SPEAKER_01: make of them.
- 9:39Another way for them to do additional training is those
- 9:43thinking modes where the AI
- 9:45SPEAKER_01: is actually prompting itself to explore a little bit further.
- 9:49SPEAKER_01: And that provided another layer of capacity.
- 9:52SPEAKER_01: And,
- 9:52SPEAKER_01: of course,
- 9:52SPEAKER_01: the last layer is the layer of human training,
- 9:57SPEAKER_01: saying this is a good answer,
- 9:58SPEAKER_01: this is not a good answer.
- 10:00SPEAKER_01: So they're using the hundreds of millions to billions of users,
- 10:04SPEAKER_01: definitely billions of queries,
- 10:06to start training the AI and give feedback about what works and
- 10:10what doesn't work.
- 10:11SPEAKER_01: And that makes it stronger.
- 10:12SPEAKER_01: So every time you click on it,
- 10:14SPEAKER_01: they're getting more data,
- 10:15SPEAKER_01: but you're potentially getting a better result at the end.
- 10:18SPEAKER_01: You've got to do your own math, I guess.
- 10:20SPEAKER_01: Is it worth it?
- 10:21SPEAKER_01: Am I working for Google or am I working for myself?
- 10:23SPEAKER_01: I've been working for Google myself for a long time.
- 10:26SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 10:27SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 10:29SPEAKER_01: But Notebook LM is probably my favorite Google feature so far.
- 10:33SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
- 10:35SPEAKER_00: It's very user-friendly, yeah.
- 10:37SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is definitely there.
- 10:39SPEAKER_01: Okay,
- 10:40so now we've talked about Notebook LM and we're really excited
- 10:44and we're thinking
- 10:45SPEAKER_01: about what happens next.
- 10:48SPEAKER_01: And I had a chance this week.
- 10:53to really dive in with a group of researchers who wanted a
- 10:58primer on using AI in
- 11:01SPEAKER_01: the research workflow.
- 11:03SPEAKER_01: And that was yesterday.
- 11:04SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 11:05SPEAKER_01: Yesterday's making a face because she was not invited.
- 11:09SPEAKER_01: She was busy.
- 11:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was like, what is happening?
- 11:13SPEAKER_01: Why didn't I know about this?
- 11:14SPEAKER_01: Well...
- 11:15SPEAKER_01: That's how it is.
- 11:16So they asked me to come and talk about this,
- 11:18and there were about,
- 11:20I think,
- 11:2130 or 40 people.
- 11:23SPEAKER_01: This was an online presentation,
- 11:25SPEAKER_01: and I was thinking about what would be useful for researchers to know.
- 11:31SPEAKER_01: And so there were two features,
- 11:32SPEAKER_01: and we're going to talk about one,
- 11:34SPEAKER_01: which is the thing we've been grappling with,
- 11:36SPEAKER_01: and that is really thinking about what does it mean to get AI help in the
- 11:41SPEAKER_01: qualitative coding process.
- 11:43SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 11:47I think that as we think about research,
- 11:50we're always thinking about how can we do this better?
- 11:53SPEAKER_01: How can we do this faster?
- 11:56SPEAKER_01: How can we do this more reliably?
- 11:58SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 11:59So those are the things that are on my mind as I'm thinking
- 12:03about why even use AI
- 12:05SPEAKER_01: in the process,
- 12:06SPEAKER_01: right?
- 12:07SPEAKER_01: It has to be worth it.
- 12:09And the first thing that I talk about is really about this
- 12:14concept of where are you
- 12:17SPEAKER_01: on the knowledge scale or more specifically thinking about the inverted
- 12:24relationship between your level of expertise and how much you
- 12:27can get out of AI.
- 12:28SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 12:29And the way I think about it is novices and experts really
- 12:33don't need AI or can't
- 12:34SPEAKER_01: use AI very effectively.
- 12:35SPEAKER_01: So novices, their real challenge is that they are novices.
- 12:41So even if they get – even if they prompt AI,
- 12:45they have no way to evaluate.
- 12:49Verify the accuracy of the data or the knowledge that they are
- 12:53getting from AI.
- 12:54SPEAKER_00: So –
- 12:55SPEAKER_00: they may be even more confused.
- 12:58SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
- 12:59SPEAKER_01: and they either take it and say,
- 13:01SPEAKER_01: looks good to me,
- 13:02SPEAKER_01: which often AI does because it's very sure of itself.
- 13:05SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I saw the experience with some of my classmates.
- 13:09SPEAKER_00: They were trying to learn coding using it.
- 13:12SPEAKER_00: and it was a source of confusion.
- 13:14I have a bachelor's degree in computer software engineering,
- 13:18so using AI was not a huge problem.
- 13:21SPEAKER_00: I could remember some of my knowledge,
- 13:22SPEAKER_00: past knowledge,
- 13:23SPEAKER_00: and then combine it with AI to came up with solutions.
- 13:27SPEAKER_00: For other students, it was a kind of a struggle.
- 13:30They were just copy and pasting the code that AI gives them,
- 13:34so it was a kind of problem.
- 13:36They were even more confused and grappling with how we can
- 13:40figure out the solution.
- 13:42SPEAKER_00: Getting more errors, going back to AI, so it's a kind of vicious cycle.
- 13:47SPEAKER_01: And vibe coding is a thing,
- 13:49but a little bit of knowledge goes a long way to help it along
- 13:53and make sure that
- 13:54SPEAKER_01: you don't get stuck and that you know what to do when you do.
- 13:56At least for troubleshooting,
- 13:58which is one of the most important parts of the coding.
- 14:02SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
- 14:02SPEAKER_01: because we always,
- 14:03SPEAKER_01: and especially when AI can produce code,
- 14:06then it's all about problem solving when you've got errors in
- 14:10the code that you're
- 14:11SPEAKER_01: trying to figure out.
- 14:13SPEAKER_01: So that's one side of the equation.
- 14:16SPEAKER_01: The other side is the experts.
- 14:17SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 14:18SPEAKER_01: And if you are an expert,
- 14:19SPEAKER_01: if you've been doing something your whole life,
- 14:22SPEAKER_01: you're probably faster,
- 14:24SPEAKER_01: more accurate and more capable than AI.
- 14:27SPEAKER_01: And in the case of academics, you also have a voice.
- 14:30SPEAKER_01: So when you're writing, you have a voice that is your voice.
- 14:34SPEAKER_01: And AI is never going to sound like you, even in writing.
- 14:38SPEAKER_01: And so...
- 14:39SPEAKER_01: You work with it,
- 14:40and I've had a few opportunities where I try to use AI for the
- 14:44purpose of writing a
- 14:45SPEAKER_01: report or something like that,
- 14:46SPEAKER_01: and I often find myself as,
- 14:48SPEAKER_01: this is overcomplicating things.
- 14:51SPEAKER_01: This is what I need to write, and I write it, and it's faster.
- 14:54SPEAKER_01: So on both sides of the equation, novice and experts,
- 14:59SPEAKER_01: we really, AI is not as useful as we'd like it to be.
- 15:03SPEAKER_01: And it's not as helpful.
- 15:05It can save you if at the last minute you need something and
- 15:08something is better
- 15:08SPEAKER_01: than nothing,
- 15:09SPEAKER_01: then fine.
- 15:10SPEAKER_01: But if you have the time, if you're a novice, you should probably learn.
- 15:13And if you're an expert,
- 15:14you can probably produce what you need to produce.
- 15:16And I think we have evidence for that based on one of our
- 15:19recent research.
- 15:20SPEAKER_00: I had an interview with a
- 15:23with a faculty member in computing school at UNL and they said
- 15:27that I never let my
- 15:28students use AI tools at the beginning of the course when they
- 15:32have no knowledge of
- 15:33SPEAKER_00: the concepts or they don't know how to do things.
- 15:35And when I give them some quizzes and then I make sure that
- 15:40they have reached to a
- 15:41SPEAKER_00: specific level of knowledge,
- 15:43then they are allowed to use AI and to compare results with
- 15:47their own solution to
- 15:48SPEAKER_00: see how it works.
- 15:49SPEAKER_01: So this is a solution.
- 15:51This is an intuitive understanding of we need to cross a
- 15:54certain threshold before we could.
- 15:56SPEAKER_01: And then in the middle of the distribution,
- 15:58SPEAKER_01: when you have some knowledge so you can evaluate,
- 16:00SPEAKER_01: but you don't remember everything.
- 16:02SPEAKER_01: I mean,
- 16:02SPEAKER_01: I think your example as a software engineer is like,
- 16:05SPEAKER_01: do you remember all the languages and all the intricacies?
- 16:09SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 16:10SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
- 16:11SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 16:12SPEAKER_01: And so, but...
- 16:14SPEAKER_01: you know enough.
- 16:15SPEAKER_01: So this is where it's super helpful,
- 16:17and this is where in the research cycle and when you're
- 16:22thinking about research,
- 16:23SPEAKER_01: this is where it can be super helpful.
- 16:26And so this is really for us as we're thinking about what do we
- 16:32do with AI in research.
- 16:33SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the pointers is we need to think about this.
- 16:37SPEAKER_01: But there are other challenges, right?
- 16:39SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm, yeah.
- 16:40SPEAKER_01: And hallucinations is a challenge.
- 16:43SPEAKER_01: So it invents stuff.
- 16:45SPEAKER_00: It invents, yeah.
- 16:48SPEAKER_00: Lots of that doesn't make sense.
- 16:49SPEAKER_00: And I think I will go back to your point.
- 16:52SPEAKER_00: When we do not have enough fundamental knowledge,
- 16:54it's really hard to do a kind of critical analysis of the AI's
- 16:59output to see which
- 17:01SPEAKER_00: part worked for us if the whole thing doesn't make sense,
- 17:04SPEAKER_00: yeah.
- 17:05SPEAKER_01: And in the paper we published a few months ago,
- 17:09SPEAKER_01: we actually looked at,
- 17:10SPEAKER_01: yeah,
- 17:11SPEAKER_01: you should go look that up.
- 17:12SPEAKER_01: It's out of the site conference.
- 17:14SPEAKER_01: And it's about qualitative coding.
- 17:16And one of the things we found with ChatGPT is when we asked
- 17:18for direct quotes from
- 17:20SPEAKER_01: the text,
- 17:22SPEAKER_01: it gave us a wonderful quote.
- 17:23SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 17:24But then we looked further and said,
- 17:27wait a minute,
- 17:28I don't remember that.
- 17:29SPEAKER_01: And we went back to the text and it wasn't there.
- 17:32So it was paraphrasing to the point that it's like,
- 17:35this was actually a good indicator.
- 17:37SPEAKER_01: That is, it was a good descriptor.
- 17:40SPEAKER_01: It just wasn't a direct quote.
- 17:41SPEAKER_01: So presenting it as such is actually a hallucination, right?
- 17:46SPEAKER_01: It's not off topic, but it never actually happened.
- 17:49SPEAKER_01: And we can't trust it at that level.
- 17:51SPEAKER_01: So that's something everybody worries about.
- 17:53SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
- 17:53and I think we experienced the same phenomenon with other AI
- 17:56tools that we tried
- 17:57SPEAKER_00: with that research.
- 17:59SPEAKER_00: I mean, they change.
- 18:01SPEAKER_00: If they didn't invent the whole quotation,
- 18:04SPEAKER_00: they changed it and they modified it to be aligned with their findings.
- 18:08SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and obviously that's not what you want.
- 18:10SPEAKER_01: You want to have the evidence concrete and not questioned.
- 18:15SPEAKER_01: The second concern,
- 18:17SPEAKER_01: and that is definitely concern,
- 18:18was a concern with a group I was talking to because many of
- 18:22them are health
- 18:23SPEAKER_01: professionals,
- 18:23SPEAKER_01: and that is the issue of privacy.
- 18:25SPEAKER_01: Oh.
- 18:26SPEAKER_01: And so when you think about the Institutional Review Board,
- 18:29SPEAKER_01: what data you can share and how,
- 18:32SPEAKER_01: not knowing exactly how much it is protected.
- 18:35SPEAKER_01: Right now,
- 18:36SPEAKER_01: there's an order for OpenAI to keep all queries,
- 18:39SPEAKER_01: even the ones we ask them to not keep out.
- 18:43SPEAKER_01: And there's a court order, so obviously the information is out there.
- 18:47SPEAKER_01: Privacy is a major concern.
- 18:48SPEAKER_01: You can't just take research data and put it in.
- 18:50You've got to go through a few steps to anonymize it and to
- 18:54make sure that it
- 18:55doesn't include anything identifiable and anything that would
- 18:59risk any of the
- 19:00SPEAKER_01: promises you made to the participant.
- 19:03SPEAKER_01: If you're wondering about this and you're a researcher, consult your IRB.
- 19:06SPEAKER_01: There are processes in place to accommodate.
- 19:09SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the biggest concerns of researchers who are using AI.
- 19:12SPEAKER_00: And some of them,
- 19:13SPEAKER_00: I've talked with a few people,
- 19:16and I think it isn't worth going through all of those steps
- 19:19just to analyze your
- 19:20SPEAKER_00: data with AI.
- 19:22SPEAKER_00: Some of them think like this.
- 19:24SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
- 19:25SPEAKER_01: And that's the expert conundrum, right?
- 19:27SPEAKER_01: So the question on the table is,
- 19:30SPEAKER_01: if this has worked and we have been doing research,
- 19:33SPEAKER_01: qualitative research,
- 19:35SPEAKER_01: before AI...
- 19:37SPEAKER_01: Why use AI?
- 19:43SPEAKER_01: She's making a face at me.
- 19:44SPEAKER_01: Why use AI?
- 19:46SPEAKER_01: What's the benefit?
- 19:47SPEAKER_01: What could be the benefit of using AI in qualitative research?
- 19:50SPEAKER_00: So my first response,
- 19:53the first thing that comes to my mind is that when you are
- 19:56dealing with a large
- 19:57SPEAKER_00: data set,
- 19:59pages and pages of transcripts,
- 20:02and it's really hard to go through all of that.
- 20:05SPEAKER_00: AI could be a good help, or as we talked about it, a good intern.
- 20:11SPEAKER_00: You can probably code the first few transcripts yourself,
- 20:15SPEAKER_00: reach intercoder agreement and everything,
- 20:17SPEAKER_00: and then train AI to do the rest of the work with you.
- 20:21SPEAKER_00: And then you can go back and verify the output that you get from AI.
- 20:26SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and...
- 20:28SPEAKER_01: Traditionally, qualitative research has dealt with...
- 20:32SPEAKER_01: Fairly small piles of data.
- 20:34SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah.
- 20:35SPEAKER_01: And either short excerpts or, and potentially lots of them.
- 20:41SPEAKER_01: I once had a database that had about 1,400 separate data pieces,
- 20:47SPEAKER_01: but they were all two to four sentences long.
- 20:50SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
- 20:51SPEAKER_01: So it was a lot of reading, but not impossible.
- 20:54SPEAKER_01: Or you have in-depth interview, but with very few people.
- 20:58SPEAKER_01: You know, we usually say eight, eight, ten, twelve.
- 21:01SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
- 21:02SPEAKER_01: Beyond that, it's hard to do reliable and consistent coding.
- 21:07SPEAKER_01: Now, you can reach saturation.
- 21:09There are other instruments that we've invented to make sure
- 21:14that we are not concerned.
- 21:16SPEAKER_01: But sometimes you do want a much richer database.
- 21:19SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 21:21SPEAKER_01: becomes really almost impossible.
- 21:24It is incredibly expensive and almost impossible to analyze
- 21:28these large data sets.
- 21:30SPEAKER_01: And here is an instrument that,
- 21:32SPEAKER_01: if you do proper training,
- 21:33might be able to provide you a better understanding of a large
- 21:38set of documents.
- 21:39It gives you the bigger picture of the data that you are trying
- 21:42to understand and analyze,
- 21:44yeah.
- 21:44SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
- 21:45SPEAKER_01: The second piece is that AI can do it as many times as you want.
- 21:50SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the best thing.
- 21:53So one of the affordances we don't think about,
- 21:56and we just reanalyze data.
- 21:57SPEAKER_01: So I did an analysis,
- 21:59SPEAKER_01: and as they gave me a look and said,
- 22:01SPEAKER_01: I'm not so sure about this thing,
- 22:03SPEAKER_01: and we reanalyzed it.
- 22:05SPEAKER_01: It was the right thing to do.
- 22:06SPEAKER_00: I still regret that question.
- 22:10SPEAKER_01: But...
- 22:13SPEAKER_01: We will not do that more than twice,
- 22:14SPEAKER_01: but you can ask AI to do that 20 times,
- 22:17SPEAKER_01: 30 times until it reaches convergence.
- 22:19SPEAKER_01: And we're like, okay, we know these are the things that are there.
- 22:22SPEAKER_01: So you can have multiple ways to do that.
- 22:25SPEAKER_01: So the repeated analysis is definitely a strength.
- 22:27SPEAKER_01: But then as I was thinking about this,
- 22:30I was thinking about the thing that is most difficult for us is
- 22:34guard against bias.
- 22:35SPEAKER_01: Now,
- 22:35I'm going to say something controversial because I'm going to
- 22:38say AI can help us
- 22:39SPEAKER_01: guard against bias.
- 22:41SPEAKER_00: Okay.
- 22:42SPEAKER_01: Even though AI is super biased itself.
- 22:45SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
- 22:46SPEAKER_01: So we know AI is biased, but we are too.
- 22:50That's why we write a statement about positionality and all of
- 22:53these things to say,
- 22:54SPEAKER_01: here's where I'm coming from.
- 22:56But we can actually ask AI to guard against our biases,
- 23:01to be the other voice,
- 23:04right?
- 23:04SPEAKER_01: And say, here's my analysis from this perspective.
- 23:07SPEAKER_01: Can you look at it from another perspective?
- 23:09SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is my experience.
- 23:11SPEAKER_00: This is my background.
- 23:12SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
- 23:13SPEAKER_01: So what would somebody who came from a different background?
- 23:17SPEAKER_00: Show me the hints that are representative of my bias in my data analysis.
- 23:22SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
- 23:23SPEAKER_01: And so it's a way to counter bias,
- 23:27which I haven't thought about until basically yesterday when we
- 23:30started thinking
- 23:30SPEAKER_01: about this.
- 23:31SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
- 23:31SPEAKER_01: this is actually an interesting area because you can say,
- 23:34SPEAKER_01: you know,
- 23:35SPEAKER_01: I have training.
- 23:36SPEAKER_01: I come from a very specific way of thinking.
- 23:38SPEAKER_01: I come from information processing theory.
- 23:41SPEAKER_01: And I think in those terms, in very cognitive terms in many ways.
- 23:46SPEAKER_01: But...
- 23:47SPEAKER_01: What would somebody who's coding it with critical theory in mind, right?
- 23:53SPEAKER_01: Or with a postcolonial theory in mind or with feminist theory in mind,
- 23:59SPEAKER_01: what would the coding look like then?
- 24:01Is an interesting counter argument and to see the convergence
- 24:04and the divergence.
- 24:06SPEAKER_01: And then I am still, as long as I can...
- 24:10SPEAKER_01: do this,
- 24:10SPEAKER_01: and the AI isn't the PI,
- 24:13SPEAKER_01: I'm the PI,
- 24:14SPEAKER_01: I can make decisions about what do I do with this information,
- 24:17SPEAKER_01: but it can definitely show me where I'm missing things.
- 24:20SPEAKER_00: I love that idea, yeah.
- 24:21And we've seen this because we've been reading quite a bit of
- 24:24the research around
- 24:27SPEAKER_01: qualitative coding with AI,
- 24:29and consistently what we're seeing is that AI and people are
- 24:33not exactly on the
- 24:34SPEAKER_01: same page,
- 24:35SPEAKER_01: they're mostly on the same page,
- 24:36SPEAKER_01: and sometimes AI comes up with things that humans say,
- 24:40I haven't thought about this,
- 24:41but now that you told me about it,
- 24:43it's kind of obvious.
- 24:45SPEAKER_01: So it's definitely pointing to those cognitive biases that are existent.
- 24:49SPEAKER_01: Now, again, AI has a bias too.
- 24:52SPEAKER_01: So you can't accept what AI said is better than human,
- 24:55SPEAKER_01: but I think about it as complementary to human.
- 24:58And it's providing a different perspective and it can,
- 25:03through prompt engineering,
- 25:06SPEAKER_01: help us do this.
- 25:07SPEAKER_01: And so...
- 25:11when you think about when,
- 25:13when qualitative researchers ask me,
- 25:18why would I be using it?
- 25:19SPEAKER_01: These are the things I'm talking about.
- 25:21SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 25:21SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you a question.
- 25:23SPEAKER_00: If you are going to use AI to reveal your biases in your data analysis,
- 25:28SPEAKER_00: then how would you talk about that in your paper or in your manuscript?
- 25:32SPEAKER_01: I think we're an uncharted grounds.
- 25:34SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's where I find myself at least half of my life.
- 25:38SPEAKER_01: Um,
- 25:39SPEAKER_01: I think you have to write out what you've done and how you've done it.
- 25:43SPEAKER_01: I think at this point, I keep going back to it, we have established ways.
- 25:48SPEAKER_01: This is how you triangulate.
- 25:50SPEAKER_01: This is how you do this.
- 25:52SPEAKER_01: We have,
- 25:52SPEAKER_01: both in qualitative and quantitative research,
- 25:55SPEAKER_01: we have established ways for reporting certain things,
- 25:58SPEAKER_01: and we have code words,
- 26:00SPEAKER_01: right?
- 26:00SPEAKER_01: Triangulating is this.
- 26:02SPEAKER_01: And you don't need to do that much explaining.
- 26:04SPEAKER_01: You just need to say...
- 26:06SPEAKER_01: What were the results?
- 26:07SPEAKER_01: But this is a new area,
- 26:10so I think you have to write it out and even potentially
- 26:13include some of the
- 26:14SPEAKER_01: outputs as an appendix or added data for people,
- 26:19SPEAKER_01: especially the reviewers,
- 26:20SPEAKER_01: but the readers in general,
- 26:23SPEAKER_01: to start understanding what's going on.
- 26:25SPEAKER_01: And I think eventually we'll settle on accepted ways to do this.
- 26:28But right now there's nothing accepted,
- 26:30so the only thing you can do is write it out.
- 26:33SPEAKER_01: This is what I did.
- 26:34SPEAKER_01: This is what I did then.
- 26:35SPEAKER_01: This is what I did then.
- 26:37SPEAKER_01: This is the result.
- 26:38SPEAKER_01: This is what I think it means.
- 26:39SPEAKER_00: Be super clear about your procedures.
- 26:42SPEAKER_01: And that's what I worry about.
- 26:45As a reviewer,
- 26:46and I talk about this a lot,
- 26:47as a reviewer,
- 26:47I'm reading a lot.
- 26:49It's very clear that people are using more and more AI,
- 26:52both in writing and in analysis.
- 26:55SPEAKER_01: I'm not opposed to it.
- 26:56I'm just really wishing people would be more forthright and
- 27:01explain what they're
- 27:02SPEAKER_01: doing and how they're doing it and how they,
- 27:04SPEAKER_01: for example,
- 27:05SPEAKER_01: try to verify that this is good.
- 27:07SPEAKER_01: And this is where...
- 27:09SPEAKER_01: In our work right now,
- 27:10SPEAKER_01: we are doing a lot of work with AI,
- 27:12SPEAKER_01: and everything we're doing,
- 27:13SPEAKER_01: we're doing multiple times.
- 27:15SPEAKER_00: Sure.
- 27:16SPEAKER_01: Because any one time is anecdotal.
- 27:18SPEAKER_01: It's like working with people, right?
- 27:20SPEAKER_01: Because AI is not consistent.
- 27:23You've got to do it enough times to know that you're getting
- 27:25the consistent result
- 27:27SPEAKER_01: that you can trust versus I just tried it once and it came out.
- 27:32SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah.
- 27:34And that's the thing that I'm worried about is people are not
- 27:36relying on this
- 27:37affordance that is that ability to iterate and have AI do it 30
- 27:42times or 10 times
- 27:44SPEAKER_01: or 11 times.
- 27:45There's that paper by Tai and colleagues that talked about when
- 27:51did their automatic
- 27:52SPEAKER_01: coding through AI reach convergence.
- 27:55SPEAKER_01: And we need more of that work,
- 27:57SPEAKER_01: but we also need everybody to understand that that's how you do this.
- 28:01SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
- 28:02and probably one of the factors that prevents people from
- 28:06iterating through AI is
- 28:07SPEAKER_00: that when you get all of those results,
- 28:10SPEAKER_00: you need to compare them to see how consistent they are.
- 28:13SPEAKER_00: So when you think about the time that you need to spend for that,
- 28:17SPEAKER_00: probably that's one of the things that you have.
- 28:21So let's wrap up quickly before we move on and say,
- 28:25can you use AI in qualitative analysis?
- 28:27SPEAKER_01: We think yes.
- 28:29SPEAKER_01: Know the literature.
- 28:30SPEAKER_01: Know what others have found about the consistency and about strategies.
- 28:35SPEAKER_01: So build on what others have done.
- 28:37And you should craft very detailed prompts for AI,
- 28:41give it enough context,
- 28:42explain the terms.
- 28:44SPEAKER_00: Even if you feel that it knows everything, it doesn't.
- 28:47SPEAKER_00: So,
- 28:47SPEAKER_00: for example,
- 28:48SPEAKER_00: talking about grounded theory,
- 28:49SPEAKER_00: you may want to define axial coding,
- 28:52SPEAKER_00: open coding,
- 28:53SPEAKER_00: selective coding,
- 28:54SPEAKER_00: and then do it step by step.
- 28:56SPEAKER_00: Ask AI not to do the whole work at once.
- 28:59SPEAKER_00: Just do it step by step.
- 29:01SPEAKER_00: Do the open coding.
- 29:02SPEAKER_00: Give me the result.
- 29:03SPEAKER_00: Check the result.
- 29:04SPEAKER_00: And then ask it to go over other steps.
- 29:08SPEAKER_01: And the last thing is, remember, you are the human overlord.
- 29:12SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 29:13SPEAKER_01: For now.
- 29:16SPEAKER_01: So act like it.
- 29:18SPEAKER_01: We are, as the researchers, ultimately responsible.
- 29:21SPEAKER_01: We cannot surrender responsibility to the machine.
- 29:23SPEAKER_00: You have the agency, not AI.
- 29:26SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 29:27SPEAKER_01: Again, at this point.
- 29:28SPEAKER_01: This might change by next week in ChatGPT 5.0, but...
- 29:33SPEAKER_01: Until then, feel assured.
- 29:35SPEAKER_01: All right.
- 29:36SPEAKER_01: Last segment for this show is how are you using AI right now?
- 29:43Right now I'm using AI for one of the qualitative papers that
- 29:47I'm working on.
- 29:49SPEAKER_00: So we previously coded, Guy and I previously coded a few transcripts and
- 29:56We had this idea that after anonymizing and after doing all of
- 30:00those things,
- 30:01SPEAKER_00: important things that Guy just mentioned,
- 30:03SPEAKER_00: we want to see how ChatGPT does the qualitative coding.
- 30:08SPEAKER_00: And we took three different approaches.
- 30:11SPEAKER_00: The first approach,
- 30:12I just asked AI to analyze the thing without giving it any kind
- 30:15of details about
- 30:18SPEAKER_00: qualitative work or different approaches that you take.
- 30:22And it surprised me with choosing the right theory and also
- 30:27talking about all of
- 30:28SPEAKER_00: the steps that we need to do when we take that approach to code the data.
- 30:33SPEAKER_00: But the result was not as I thought, and it was kind of disappointing.
- 30:39SPEAKER_00: You remember, Guy, I showed you the results for that.
- 30:42So it didn't do the line-by-line coding as we usually do in
- 30:46qualitative analysis.
- 30:48SPEAKER_00: And it just gave me some samples of the data with codes.
- 30:52SPEAKER_00: But in terms of extracting the themes,
- 30:56SPEAKER_00: we felt that maybe it did a fairly,
- 30:59SPEAKER_00: well,
- 31:00SPEAKER_00: kind of a good job,
- 31:02SPEAKER_00: I think.
- 31:03SPEAKER_00: But yeah, what was your idea about the first approach and the AI output?
- 31:09SPEAKER_01: I think that one of the things we fail when we over-engineer the prompts,
- 31:13SPEAKER_01: we fail to uncover the advances that
- 31:21that AI is making,
- 31:22generative AI is making in understanding those whole worlds.
- 31:28So I think it's good to give specific prompts and walk the
- 31:32process very carefully.
- 31:34SPEAKER_01: But two things stick in my mind.
- 31:35One is they are getting better and they know things like they
- 31:39basically spelled out
- 31:40SPEAKER_01: how to do grounded theory in that feedback.
- 31:44SPEAKER_01: So obviously something is happening that isn't required.
- 31:46SPEAKER_01: And maybe if you don't want grounded theory, you should tell it.
- 31:49SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 31:50SPEAKER_01: But it's defaulting into that.
- 31:52The second thing that emerged in my mind is the paper that
- 31:57Ethan Malik was really
- 31:59SPEAKER_01: pointing to about maybe the outcome is more important than the steps.
- 32:05SPEAKER_01: And so I'm still somewhat baffled.
- 32:09So a lot of the work we've done and others have done is,
- 32:13is AI like human,
- 32:15right?
- 32:16SPEAKER_01: Are we going to get the same results?
- 32:18It might be that we're getting a little bit different results,
- 32:21but it's just as good.
- 32:22SPEAKER_01: So complementary or just different.
- 32:26SPEAKER_01: So that's an interesting way to think about it.
- 32:28And that's why when I try things,
- 32:31I try them in different levels of depth to see if it matters.
- 32:35SPEAKER_01: And am I still getting what I want to get?
- 32:37SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
- 32:38SPEAKER_01: And is accuracy,
- 32:40SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say something really controversial,
- 32:41SPEAKER_01: but it's going to be,
- 32:42SPEAKER_01: is accuracy really that important if the basic coding is the same?
- 32:47SPEAKER_01: So that's a question in my mind.
- 32:49We'll talk about this another time because we're running out of
- 32:51time and we want to
- 32:53SPEAKER_01: make sure that people are not just switching off immediately.
- 32:56SPEAKER_01: So today we talked about using AI.
- 33:00SPEAKER_01: specifically generative AI, but we use AI to meet them.
- 33:04SPEAKER_01: We talked about Notebook LM.
- 33:06SPEAKER_01: We talked a lot about what are we doing with qualitative research,
- 33:09SPEAKER_01: what are our thoughts,
- 33:11SPEAKER_01: and next time we'll just pick it up there and talk about some new things.
- 33:15SPEAKER_00: And we love your feedback.
- 33:18SPEAKER_01: Yes,
- 33:18we would love as many emails as you can send us because we
- 33:23don't get enough email
- 33:24SPEAKER_01: is really where it's at.
- 33:26SPEAKER_01: All right, we'll see you next time.
- 33:28SPEAKER_00: See you.