Overall, I felt that my AI of choice (Copilot) was able to provide a fairly comprehensive summary of Jame’s article, especially when asked for a shorter, more concise summary. The summary hit on key points such as the associations made between hysteria, redundancy, and menopausal woman, where menopause is seen as a period in which hysteria is most prone and the point at which women become redundant, losing social significance and value, which is reinforced by medical discourse about older women. It was fairly effective at getting at the key ideas of the article, but I would be hesitant to use it for evidence gathering in academic articles. In longer summaries, it had trouble hierarchizing what was worth summarizing, and thereby what quotes were worth including to make its point. Granted, I did not use very specific prompts, which may have affected its performance. I used very simple prompts asking Copilot to summarize without any guidelines, except to make a shorter summary after its initial summary.
I would use AI in my research primarily for ensuring the sources I am finding are relevant to my topic of research. Tools like these make it easier to parse through innumerable journal articles related to your research topic that may or may not have information relevant to your specific question or interest.
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