Best AI setups for research
Setups for finding, reading and citing sources, including long PDFs and academic papers.
- Best AI setup for research
The best AI setup for research today is Perplexity for fast, cited web answers plus NotebookLM for working through your own sources. Use the Evidence-Based Researcher persona so every claim gets a citation. Pick Google AI Pro for Gemini Deep Research reports. Pick Elicit or Consensus for academic papers.
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- Best AI for summarizing PDFs and long documents
The best AI setup for summarizing PDFs and long documents today is NotebookLM, because it answers only from the files you upload and cites the passage. For one-off summaries of a single long file, use Claude with its pdf skill. Use the Evidence-Based Researcher persona to keep summaries tied to page numbers. NotebookLM is free to start.
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- Best AI setup for academic research and papers
The best AI setup for academic research today is Elicit to find papers and extract findings, plus NotebookLM to read the papers you choose. Use Consensus or Scite to check what the evidence says, and the Evidence-Based Researcher persona so nothing gets cited without a source. Always read the original paper before citing it.
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