Writing and Research Tools

The landscape of scholarly work is increasingly benefiting from AI applications, with a burgeoning array of solutions designed to streamline workflows in research and writing, ranging from summarizing articles to assisting with complex systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Article Reviews and Summaries

For tasks such as article reviews and summarization, popular AI tools like Notebook LM and ChatGPT are readily available.

These platforms allow users to upload a document and generate a summary or a critical review of its content. While seemingly convenient, their use for scientific review comes with significant caveats, particularly concerning privacy and security.

A major dilemma can surface due to the fact that most journals currently do not allow the use of AI tools when performing scientific reviews of articles.9 This restriction stems from at least one fundamental concern: when an article is uploaded to an AI service like OpenAI (which powers ChatGPT), the user effectively loses control of that information, which can lead to potential public disclosure of unpublished, sensitive data.

The risk is that an author’s manuscript data, intended to remain confidential during the peer-review process, could inadvertently be used to train the AI model in the future. Such scenarios have already sparked numerous lawsuits concerning the unauthorized use of data for training large language models, a reality that underscores why surgeons should avoid such breaches of confidentiality when using these tools.

Systematic Reviews

The tools available for performing complex research tasks like systematic reviews are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Specific examples include SWIFT-Review, Rayyan, and ResearchRabbit with Rayyan being one of the most well-developed of these tools.

An illustrative example of the potential of systemic review solutions comes from Abigail Loszko, MD, who recently conducted simultaneous systematic reviews, one using traditional methods and another using only AI tools.10 While the AI method was not quite as thorough or well-developed as the traditional approach conducted by a research librarian, the study demonstrated significant time savings using AI tools. Furthermore, the AI solutions identified a reasonable number of additional papers that were not found using traditional search methods, highlighting the potential of AI tools to augment rather than simply replace established research practices.

Meta-Analyses

Moving to even more complex research tasks, AI tools also are emerging for performing meta-analyses, such as Elicit, Grapha, and DataSquirrel. Meta-analyses, however, are significantly “trickier” as they require AI tools to extract, pool, and analyze data from multiple sources, introducing a higher degree of complexity and potential for error. As a result, most of these tools are not yet ready for widespread use.

Given the considerable amount of manual data oversight that still needs to be performed to produce trustworthy results, it is currently safer to conduct these analyses manually. Nevertheless, the rapid pace of development suggests it will not be long before these tools are reliably incorporated into everyday surgical research workflows.

The applications of AI in surgery, from ambient AI to prediction tools and sophisticated research aids, are just a few examples of the transformative potential of this technology. Despite certain ethical considerations and current stipulations from journals that may require disclosure of AI use or prohibit it for scientific reviews, these tools are rapidly evolving. AI will soon become as ubiquitous in our professional lives as are the spelling and grammar checkers we rely on daily, with most common word processing tools already incorporating predictive text features built on AI frameworks.

AI tools represent the future of surgical practice and research. Becoming familiar with them undoubtedly will make certain aspects of your professional life easier. It is paramount for surgeons to remain acutely aware of the pitfalls, potential mistakes, and critical ethical considerations that accompany their use.

Thoughtful adoption, coupled with an understanding of their limitations and responsibilities, will be key to harnessing AI’s full potential in enhancing patient care and streamlining surgical workflows.