How to Write a Research Proposal #4 - The Abstract and The Ask!

Asking the Research Question you want answered… a process to structuring your inquiry

You think you know how to answer a question… until you have to ask the question first, and then come up with the answer too!

There is a process to structuring your inquiry of thought!

…a thought process + structure = inquiry

but is an inquiry an answerable request ?

The funny thing about scientific research… is that.. it is NOT about giving a complete answer.

Scientific research is about discovering if there are ANY answers to the question asked.

the Yes or No answer == is there a result or consequence from the action taken?

Yes, there was a conclusive result.

or…

No, there are no conclusive results from the research performed.

that's it.

that is how we do research.

ofc there’s more! there’s ALWAYS more!

OK there's MORE!

We need to have a standardized way of performing 'research' so that anytime someone does 'research' …we know that they followed the same standardized steps to conduct said 'research'

The Scientific Method!

yes.

it's still a thing.

sometimes the wording / language may change, depending who is asking, in what field/industry.

but there's still a standard process of steps.

First!:

We ask the Question / Thought Inquiry.

We form it into a Hypothesis
… which will allow us to answer the question with a 'Yes' or 'No' answer.

*See above for why yes/no.

• We run Experiments to test our theory/hypothesis

• We review the Results.

• Repeat as needed.

  • or Conclude the Research and…

• Present the Results!

…then we discuss and/or debate the results and why why why blablabla… and then ask if we could have done it better? or if we should do it again? or if we should come up with a better Research Question / Hypothesis.

i am kinda using some terms interchangeably just for the sake of simplistic understanding. We can get technical later.

So Here is my process in writing the research question in my homework…

I was wondering… hmm… AI is really in the news a lot these days!
… maybe i can ask about that?
People are wondering if AI is sentient?
does AI have consciousness?

i turned in my research question…

and then i got the feedback:

"you need to define your terms LLMS? AI Assistant Agents??"

"how are you defining conciousness?"

"for the final it has to be an actual 10 page paper that conforms to guidelines. You need to expand and develop these ideas. Your hypotheses should have emprical support - I am predciting this based on the research by ??? who found ..."

😭

** ugh **

here is feedback from another professor, who has experience in the field of human-computer-interaction (hci)

"Love this area of inquiry! I would start to ask more specific questions that we could test - for example, "Do people believe personified AI programs like Siri or Cortana hold more conscious qualities than non-personified LLMs/programs like Chat GBT or Grammarly?" "

😑

** sigh **

…i wrote back:

hi! thank you for this feedback guidance for specifics in my research question. I am aiming to examine LLM-based AI Applications.

So it may include apps like Siri or Cortana, but it also includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others that offer human interactivity with a conversational-styled engagement.

** meows in disgruntlement **

context matters in research.

psychology people don't know what computer stuff is.

terms need to be defined, so the readers understand what the researcher is talking about. getting more specific is the tricky part!

…a few days later, i updated my research question to:
Why do people believe AI-enhanced interactive programs, like LLMs and AI-Assistant Agents, hold more conscious qualities than non-personified interactive computer programs?

one of my profs wrote back a week later… but i literally did not see this feedback til now, a month later 😑

"Great! I would still challenge you to take your thinking a bit further!

Do you want to do a qualitative exploration? For example, interviewing people about "why?"

Do you want to see if there are any constructs that correlate with "conscious qualities" ie, doing a survey and prompting people with specific features/qualities and seeing if they report "more conscious-like" traits?

Or an experimental manipulation where you have some people interact with a "non-personified" program or a "personified" one and then give assessments of the "consciousness" of the programs?

Knowing a bit more about how you want to test this will give you a better grasp on how to ask the question!"

😑 sigh! …back to the drawing board, i guess.

but hey, at least my assignment is turned in.

what do you think?