How can AI bring academic research to the fore?

A platform recommends relevant research and makes it easier to understand for readers

Spotted: In 2024, more than two billion people could vote in elections being held throughout 50 countries. This is the largest sequence of elections since generative AI tools became widely available in 2023. Many experts believe that governments are not fully prepared for the new situation, with technology developments having rapidly outpaced regulation, and policies such as the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act not becoming active until 2025 at the earliest. But, as much as AI-driven misinformation is a particular concern for the coming year, the technology can also be used to help us access and interpret essential information. 

AI can help prioritise publications based on an individual’s preferences, which is how social media platform feeds work. For those worried about increasingly narrow perspectives forcing people into echo chambers, a new discussion platform is launching to help bring the latest research to the forefront of public discourse.  

Created by Danish startup Proemial, Proem is an AI-powered platform for open discussion that personalises reading recommendations to users and suggests connections across many different fields of study. The company brings together a variety of AI models to digest research and then make it not only applicable to scholars, but also interesting, relevant, and easy to understand for the general populace without specialist knowledge.

The platform encourages collaboration across teams and fields of study with a public Q&A forum. And by bringing scientific research into the larger public domain, Proem’s team hopes to facilitate deeper, more innovative discussion and, ideally, further research fuelled by the connections made via the site. The platform customises feeds based on users’ queries and interests, and readers can ask detailed, conversational questions of the AI to garner more detailed insights into various research results.  

In November 2024, coinciding with the divisive US Presidential Election, Proemial also released its Proem News tool. Wanting to tackle the growing volume of misleading and biased content being distributed around the internet, Proem News allows users to copy the URL of any news story and better understand its scientific credibility. The AI technology scrapes the company’s index of 240 million research papers to find the most relevant sources and offer some fact-based context.

CEO and Co-Founder Geet Khosla explained: “We did not want to influence a specific election result. We do however aim to influence the public discourse around politics following the results, providing an easy tool for people to stay informed by science.” In due course, Proem News will be able to annotate other relevant, topical news stories, as well as other content users want to enhance with academic sources.

Written By: Keely Khoury

This article was updated on 5th November 2024.