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Course Guide ~ HIST 124 / The Silk Road

AI Tools

Generative AI tools are large language model-based AI chatbots designed to engage in open-ended dialogue, answer questions, analyze data and images, and assist with various tasks like writing, coding, and math problems.

Students are strongly advised to consult with their professor before using AI-generated content in their research or coursework.

  • Amplify
    • Hosted at Hamilton by LITS. Offers enhanced privacy, enabling users to upload more confidential data.
    • An open-source text-based generative AI platform that offers users the option to choose between multiple AI models from Claude (Anthropic), Chat GPT (OpenAI), to Mistral AI.
    • Amplify documentation
       
  • Google Gemini
    • Available in Hamilton.edu Google Workspace accounts. Use your college credentials to access Gemini 2.5 Flash, and limited access to Gemini 2.5 Pro.
    • Gemini Advanced - $19.99/month
    • A family of AI models that powers many of Google's products, including Gmail, Docs, Search, and the Gemini chatbot. The Gemini AI-powered chatbot uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to respond to prompts in text, images, and audio; It can answer questions, summarize text, and generate content.
       
  • ChatGPT (OpenAI)
    • Plus - $20/month - GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini; Includes DALL-E image generation
    • A chatbot and virtual assistant that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate human-like text responses to questions and prompts.
       
  • Claude (Anthropic)
    • Pro - $20/month
    • Team $30 per person/month; minimum 5 members
    • Claude is trained to have natural conversations, and can perform tasks such as summarizing, editing, answering questions, making decisions, and writing code. Claude is built with safety and ethics in mind, and is designed to produce helpful, harmless, and honest content. Claude does not collect or store personal information.
       
  • ​​​​​​​​​​Microsoft Copilot
    • Available in Hamilton.edu Microsoft accounts.
    • Copilot Pro - $20/month
    • An AI-powered digital assistant that helps users with a variety of tasks and activities on their devices; It can work with Microsoft 365 applications and Bing, and is available for Windows 11, Windows 10, Mac, Apple iOS, and Android.

For more tools see:

AI Research & Discovery tools can assist in research and reading activities like discovery, summarizing research articles, recommending related research, experiment design, visualizing citation networks, extracting data, and data analysis. 

Students are strongly advised to consult with their professor before using AI-generated content in their research or coursework.

  • NotebookLM (Google)
    • Available in Hamilton.edu Google Workspace accounts. Use your college credentials to access NotebookLM.
    • An AI-powered research and writing assistant that helps you generate summaries, ask questions, and explore ideas based on your own documents (e.g., PDFs).
    • NotebookLM Help
       
  • Consensus
    • Premium - $8.99/month
    • An academic search engine, powered by AI. 200M+ research papers from the Semantic Scholar database comprise the source material, across all domains of science.
       
  • Elicit
    • Plus - $10-$12/month
    • Searches for research papers and generates custom summaries. Powered by Semantic Scholar.
       
  • Perplexity AI
    • Perplexity Pro - $20/month
    • An AI-powered search engine powered that provides the sources for its responses. Can be used as an alternative to Google.
       
  • Research Rabbit
    • Find related research, get personalized recommendations, visualizations, sharing/collaboration features, Zotero integration. Powered by PubMed and Semantic Scholar.

For more tools see:

AI Image Generation tools produce or edit images from text-based prompts.

Students are strongly advised to consult with their professor before using AI-generated content in their research or coursework.

  • Adobe Firefly
    • Free for Hamilton community. Included in these Adobe Creative Cloud apps - Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Express, Adobe Stock.
    • Hamilton community members receive access to the standard plan with 2,000 credits per month.
    • Adobe Firefly Learn & Support
    • Adobe Firefly app - $4.99/month
       
  • DALL-E3
  • Craiyon
    • Basic free version
    • $10-$20/month for Supporter and Professional plans.
       
  • Midjourney
    • $10-$120/month for Basic, Standard, Pro and Mega plans
    • Discord account required (free)
       
  • Stable Diffusion 3.5
    • Free version

For more tools see:

AI Prompts

Tutorials and Courses

  • We Are AI - NYU Center for Responsible AI - r/ai
    This course introduces the basics of AI and discusses its social and ethical dimensions. The course is structured into five modules, each with a video and a comic book series for supplementary reading. It's designed for group learning without requiring math or programming skills. The course aims to empower individuals to understand and engage with AI in their lives. Materials are provided for facilitators to run the course with minimal preparation, and it's suitable for both online and in-person learning circles.

Hamilton College faculty, students, and staff have access to LinkedIn Learning for free by using your College credentials. More information about your account can be found at LITS Educational Opportunities.

LinkedIn Learning is an online platform offering a diverse range of video courses in business, technology, and creative skills, taught by industry experts. Example AI courses include:

These are just example courses. We encourage you to explore LinkedIn Learning for an AI course that fits you the best.

  • Coursera / edX 
    Coursera and edX courses on AI (free and fee-based) have been developed by multiple institutions on a variety of topics.

Readings

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