Natalie

March 30, 2023 | Read time: 6 min

Using ChatGPT to Write Your Thesis the Right Way

Who hasn’t heard about ChatGPT, the chatbot that took the internet by storm with a click!

For the lesser known, ChatGPT seems to represent a significant advance in AI writing technology, as it can respond to prompts and questions with very natural, human-like capabilities. It can write a Shakespeare-style poem for you about admission to law school, or offer five tips for taking better care of curly hair. In fact, ChatGPT is so good that many students have already been using it to do their homework for them.

If you’ve already tried ChatGPT, you’ve probably been impressed by what it can do (I certainly have been). While it can miraculously write a full-length essay with you just commanding it with a single-line prompt, ChatGPT isn’t quite there when it comes to writing your thesis. However, it can be of some use in helping you research and write. Wonder how? Let’s find out.

Using ChatGPT for Thesis Research

There are a couple of ways that you can use ChatGPT to help you with thesis research. These include:

Collating literature: You can use ChatGPT to research and gather information on a specific topic related to your thesis. The AI can provide reference articles, research papers, and other relevant sources regarding your subject.
Brainstorming ideas: If you're struggling to find a topic idea for your thesis, ChatGPT can help by generating new ideas or suggesting different angles to explore.
Providing feedback: ChatGPT can read your thesis and offer suggestions for improvement. (Well, I am not trusting a robot here!)

How Can You Find Relevant Information Using ChatGPT?

One thing to consider about AI, no matter how advanced, is that its outputs are only as good as its inputs. In other words, in order for AI to provide you with useful answers, you need to be specific about what you are looking for.

If you want ChatGPT to find you some relevant information about your research topic, provide the program with a detailed prompt or background information about the topic. The more details you offer, the more targeted the results will be. Consider the following two prompts:

I want to research how the pharmaceutical industry prices drugs.
Can you find me some sources that explain how therapeutic novelty is priced into patent-protected pharmaceuticals?

If you type the first prompt into ChatGPT, the program will offer you some strategies for how to go about your research. It suggests consulting academic databases (Google Scholar, JSTOR) and specifies some journals that deal with relevant topics (Health Affairs, Journal of Health Economics). It also offers keywords that will help you find articles about the topic (“pharmaceutical pricing,” “drug costs,” etc.).

The second prompt, however, gives you an actual list of academic articles and a summary of each one. You can ask ChatGPT for more sources, and it will continue to offer specific article titles and summaries.

How Can You Use ChatGPT for Thesis Writing?

Just like you can ask ChatGPT to help you find resources and narrow down your research topic, ChatGPT can also help you generate a thesis statement and write some of the trickier parts of your thesis. While I don’t personally recommend using ChatGPT’s writing word-for-word, it can be a helpful tool for getting started.

ChatGPT can help you generate a thesis statement if you provide it with some background information about your topic and are specific about the direction you would like your research to go. ChatGPT will also help you brainstorm thesis statements. For example, if you offer ChatGPT the words “pharmaceutical pricing,” “patent protection,” and “free trade agreements” and ask it to create a thesis statement, it provides the following:

"The impact of pharmaceutical pricing and patent protection on access to essential medicines is a critical issue in the context of free trade agreements, as it creates a trade-off between the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies and the public health needs of individuals."

Pretty impressive, right? You can also ask it to generate topic sentences, supporting paragraphs, introductions, or conclusions for your paper. Often, you don’t want to use what it produces word-for-word, but it can absolutely get you started and help you think of ideas.

So, Why Can’t ChatGPT Just Write My Thesis For Me?

You might be wondering at this point why ChatGPT can’t just write your whole thesis for you. After all, it can research, proofread, edit, brainstorm, and fix logical problems. So what can’t it do?

Well, ChatGPT has a few limitations that are pretty important. First, ChatGPT doesn’t provide you with actual sources when it writes something. For example, if you ask how drugs are priced, it will answer, but it won’t provide you with sources for that answer unless you ask it specifically. If you copy an answer from ChatGPT word-for-word, you’ll likely end up plagiarizing another source.

As mentioned above, AI outputs are only as good as their inputs. ChatGPT gets its information from a variety of sources, and not all of them are accurate. Moreover, the program is incapable of distinguishing between correct and incorrect information. So, you should always verify any information the program provides you.

Finally, ChatGPT can have some issues understanding the vocabulary that is very specific to a narrow subject or context. For this reason, it may not always be able to provide you with the assistance you need. But as an AI model, it is learning all the time, so these gaps in knowledge may be filled later.

ChatGPT is a great tool that can help you research and write. It can even help you find sources, edit your work, and check for plagiarism. But AI is only as good as its sources, and ChatGPT can provide erroneous information. Therefore, you should consider ChatGPT a helpful tool rather than a replacement for academic work. So yes, ChatGPT can absolutely help write your thesis, but can’t own it up like you can!