Academic Tea

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Inspiration

Forty-fifty pages of a reading isn't always easy to process at once-- especially if it's centuries-old text or a research paper packed with technical terms. We wanted to present the information in a more easily-digestible way, and what piques interest more than news intended to entice?

What it does

Our project is a tool that takes in a pdf of text, and translates all the jargon into a gossip-column style of writing. Similar to a best friend spilling the latest drama, we've broken down the complex into simple analogies and made information exciting without changing the core facts.

How we built it

We used Python to design an AI workflow, wrapping it with Modal for easy scaling. For the natural language processing component, we used Qwen-2.5 7B Instruct LLM. To implement our frontend UI, we leveraged HTML and CSS.

Challenges we ran into

Because AI Inference is new to us, we struggled to translate our ideas with code. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Antigravity provided us with a starting point, helped break down lines of code, and guided us as we experimented with prompting and refining our UI design.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to successfully prompt AI to rewrite complex research topics and historical writing into fun, understandable information. After some challenges, we also integrated the frontend with the backend, aligning our Modal functions with the UI design.

What we learned

This experience taught us a lot about what AI inference involves. We learned how specific and intentional prompting affects the performance of different LLM models. Working within API and Generative AI credit limits also gave us insight into challenges real-world developers face. Finally, connecting the frontend and backend highlighted the importance of UI design in effectively translating ideas into a functional application.

What's next for Academic Tea

We plan to expand the range of styles users can apply to text, such as adjusting the level of simplification or dramatization. We also aim to enhance the UI with a more creative design, like a newspaper column-inspired layout.