Perplexity AI vs ChatGPT for Research - Who wins?

I have been a chat GPT Fanboy for ages chat GPT chat GPT chat GPT but I have been told so many times that perplexity is better there's been loads of updates to perplexity to chat GPT that I wanted to solve it once and for all so we're going to compare chat GPT with perplexity and create a little scoreboard scoreboard oh you'll be surprised and I was actually surprised about which one does certain things better we're going to look at the four things that sort of like PhD students normally do that's finding literature asking for help

with explaining peer-reviewed papers some data analysis and also writing and editing so here we go the first thing I went over the chat GPT and I said I am starting a research project about hydrogen production for hydrogen energy using Catal cat catalysts can you please recommend the best peer-reviewed papers to read for this project and I did exactly the same in um perplexity but with perplexity I used academic all right so if you go over to perplexity you do have lots of options let me just find that for you should have prepared this a bit

earlier how unprofessional of me but if you go to perplexity look you can go to focus and you've got academic writing all of that sort of stuff now clearly I wanted to search in published academic papers so for the perplexity version of this I clicked academic so let's go back to chat GPT blon and it says it's searched for s so this is what it found and it does sort of like present them just in bullet points so here we've got for your research project and H production using catalysts I recommend starting with the following

peer- reviewed papers so I click through and they are actual real papers so we're not having to deal too much with the hallucination that we saw a few months ago which is really great and uh you know these are actually pretty good papers which I like so well done chat GPT it did what I wanted it to do if phone 4 papers but does perplexity do better considering that I can tell it to do um academic searching so exactly the same here and then because I've got Pro for both uh chat GPT and perplexity I

paid the money you can see that it went and did a pro search and it found 20 sources so clearly perplexity has done so much better at finding resources so let's have a look to see what it says based on the following uh search results here are the most relevant highly recommended peer-reviewed papers for your research project so it gives me different kind of sections as well which I really like Catalyst for hydrogen production Electro Catalyst for water splitting hydrogen for chemical hydrides and here's the thing it gives this little summary down the bottom I

would recommend starting with the review papers 357 so you can see it's given 20 but it's actually sort of said look start here so I have to say that this is a win for perplexity Bing chalk it up because perplexity has won this one hands down sorry chat GPT sorry mate perplexity has just done a little bit better actually not a little bit better way better so the next thing I wanted to test is whether or not chat GPT and perplexity can explain research papers so I went to chat GPT first and I uploaded one

of my papers and I I said explain the key important points to me from this paper so pretty clunky uh prompt but nonetheless here we are it said here memory updated so it put this into its memory and then it's got introduction experimental results and discussion you can see it loves doing bullet points does old chat GPT so it gives me loads of bullet points I don't mind bullet points um but it does get a little bit boring and repetitive when you're doing this over and over again you kind of like you know lose uh

how many bullet points you've actually read and it gets really sort of just uh boring I think but look it's done what I want it to do there's no details in there it's pretty high level but once again remember that with any large language model it's a conversation going backwards and forwards so yeah this is good I would say this is good so can perplexity do any better and I did the exact same thing explained the key important points to me from this paper what a clunky prompt but once again it went out it did

research question and it also did searching the web which is kind of interesting because I only wanted to look at that paper but it's found sources and then it's it's gone out and it's actually sort of like combined the sources with the paper but it's mainly done the paper you'll see what I mean here it says um okay the answer here are the key important points and instead of going section through Section like chat GPT did it kind of pulls out the most important things and categorizes it together so it says that we've got fabrication

and ferally graded active layers which is great and then we've got improved open circuit voltage which is great but then also you can see look it's got my paper but then it's also got this one morol control in organic solar cells so I think I like that it's trying to sort of like add deeper understanding to This research paper so it's a win sorry chat GPT I'll miss you but I think perplexity is my new best friend ding chalk it up another one for perplex perplexity at this point I'm feeling pretty sad for chat GPT

cuz perplexity is winning but can it redeem itself with this I want to see if it can plot graphs and do a little bit of calculation for me so I put in some unstructed data that I've got from my PhD and post and I said this is IV data from soless pel testing Can you plot the IV curve and calculate the efficiency of the device so it says what it's going to do which is great and then it gives me all of this stuff that I don't really understand but this is a load of um

I think it's python code look at that and then it's calculating efficiency it knows how to calculate efficiency it really does such a great job chap GPT I love it when you're doing data analysis so this this is what it gives me where blah blah blah from the file and it knows where to find the information and then it says okay let's implement this in code and see the results and then it goes backwards and forwards a little bit it didn't extract the data initially but it tries and tries again um and then it comes

up with something to correctly pass the data so it's kind of uh corrected itself which I really like Anyway let's get to the uh the most important thing which is this it managed to do an IV curve which I really like you can see it's an active graph you can click around and do things you can switch to a static graph if you really want that's really great so I would pull this out for example for any sort of little reporting that I'm doing to my group or my supervisor for my supervisor meetings I'm dribbly

again I'm getting old just dribbling just leaking from my mouth and uh yeah so we'll go back to interactive graph you can see we can hover over it love it love it love it and then it says uh yeah the efficiency of the device is calculated is zero it was yeah that that device failed so well done um it did it so can perplexity do any better than that so this is exactly the same um thing that I put into chat GPT it's understanding the question it's reading one file and then it's saying plot this

this code will generate an IV plot with the average BL so I need to go and use this somewhere in mat lab or in Python to actually um plot this it didn't do a graph but fail and uh it says the efficiency of Soler so was already already provided the metadata so here it's looking at the metadata it hasn't sort of like gone and calculated it itself so I think this is a win for chat GPT you've redeemed yourself chat GPT the last cheeky little test oh cheeky cheeky little test that I wanted to do

was have a look to see what it's like for writing comparing chat GPT and perplexity AI on which one is best for writing and edit editing scientifically so I said rewrite this to make it more suitable for peer review and I took one of my unfinished review papers took the first massive paragraph copied it in and said make this better and you can see here transparent electrod have become integrated does a pretty good job chat GPT of just taken what I've got and just making it a little bit better but you can see that it

hasn't tried to reference anything it's removed the references but it has really sort of like tightened up that academic language so once again good but perplexity you've done it again you cheeky son of a gun okay I tried not to swear through any of that can't demonetize me um now I've got this exact same thing here rewrite this paragraph to make it more suitable for peer review I've got that massive paragraph and uh I like it oh my God I like it because it's gone out searching the web and it's found peer-reviewed papers to um

put into the references so not only do I have better references potentially I'd need to check them obviously um but it has tried to reference where it needs to be referenced like here even so how to perform P oh how to perform peer review you've received an invitation oh I don't know why that one's there Don't Be Cruel how to write Fair peer okay all right okay we've delved a little bit deeper it's a bit rubbish with the references so it's done and okay at creating the text I think it it reads better we got

peer review how to write a peer review okay it's completely misunderstood the references when I first looked at this I was like oh my God it's my references I would say that because of this chat GPT wins I think because it's just not giving me anything useful P reviewed examples this paragraph summons the key points to the paper with references cited at the end but it's the wrong references mate sorry perplexity oh my God that means chat GPT wins Bing it's a draw draw it's a draw H so that means to me that you really

have to tral this for the ways you want to use it if you want to do much more data analysis it makes no sense to use perplexity you should be using chat GPT it does a far better job with data but if you're looking for references if you're looking for more academic kind of searching online clearly perplex is the best so no one siiz fits all and unfortunately it's going to have to be a draw here here um I'd probably use both I'd probably know the strengths of each and say perplexity you're better at searching

the internet getting me references and starting that literature review whereas chat GPT you're probably a little bit better at academic writing although equal there maybe and you're a little bit better or you're much better at data analysis so there we are perplexity AI versus chat GPT both what a cop out on my part if you like this video go check out this one where I talk about using perplexity AI in research and how terrifyingly smart it has got you'll love it go check it out