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Meet o1: The New AI Model Set to Transform Research

Published about 1 month ago • 1 min read

New ChatGPT version with reasoning capabilities: o1

Dear Scholar,

This week, OpenAI has released a new version of ChatGPT: o1. It is a step up from ChatGPT-4o (Who comes up with these names!?) in reasoning, math and coding, but it also comes at the drawback of being slower and more expensive. In today's post, I compare the two models for academics:

​The New Chat GPT update: o1 vs GPT-4o (12 min read)

This article explains the differences and similarities between the two models and contains a few examples for academics. First, explaining a complex topic. Second, reading and understanding a (theoretical) paper. Third, logical reasoning about a concept definition; and last, a chemical calculation. o1 generally provides better, longer answers but is not always worth the slowness.

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Get the most out of ChatGPT?

While ChatGPT's capabilities are advancing, one thing remains important: The way you talk to ChatGPT. We might think of ChatGPT as a research assistant or co-pilot, but that is not the case. It is a generic machine intelligence that has no background information about you and your use-cases and is subject to strange and almost emotional effects in its reply. It does not "think" like a human despite the semblance.

In order to leverage AI for your academic research, you need to talk to it in a way that it understands and can't misinterpret. This is exactly what you can learn in my course on AI.

According to reviewers, it is one of the best courses for Academic AI available:

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Ilya Shabanov,

The Effortless Academic​

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