List of AI and Related Resources used in Religious Studies Research

Compiled by: Chris Johnson, Alex Amies, Howie Lan, and Shanshan Li 12/8/2025

This page lists AI tools and related resources that students and faculty at the University of the West Department of Religious Studies have found useful. These tools and resources have been used in REL 641 Topics in Buddhist Studies and research projects.

Resources Created by UWest Faculty, Fo Guang Shan, and Partners

• Lewis Lancaster YouTube Lectures – NotebookLM – Professor Lewis Lancaster Notebook
• dharmamitra.org – Canonical text translation
• Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism – translating the Fo Guang Dictionary of Buddhism and partnering with the Berkley AI Research lab on translation of Chinese canonical text with Dharmamitra.

Translation, Summarization, and Chatbots

• notebooklm.google.com
• gemini.google.com
• chatgpt.com
• Claude
• SUNO – AI generated songs (for fun)

Literature Search and AI Research Assistants

• Google Scholar Labs – AI enhanced version of the go-to resource for literature search, scholar.google.com
• www.semanticscholar.org
• openalex.org
• app.researchrabbit.ai
• asta.allen.ai
• beta.neuralumi.com
• www.smartresearch-ai.com/home
• SciSpace AI Research Agent | 150+ Tools, 280 M Papers

Ethics and Citing AI Models

• ChatGPT: A comprehensive review on background, applications, key challenges, bias, ethics, limitations and future scope – paper on AI ethics
• Chicago Style Guide FAQ
• How to cite ChatGPT – APA Style

Prompt Engineering and Resources about AI

• Prompt engineering: overview and guide – from Google
• Text Generation and Prompting – Open AI Guide
• LM Arena Leaderboard – model rankings
• Machine Learning Crash Course

Digital Collections of Canonical Texts

• Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon
• The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue
• SAT – Taishō Tripiṭaka from University of Tokyo
• CBETA – Digital versions of the Chinese Buddhist canon
• Dhamma Talks – translations of Pali texts by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
• 84000 Project – Tibetan texts
• suttacentral.net – parallel texts

Vibe Coding, Software Development, and Data Visualization 

• Antigravity – Vibe coding software development environment 
• Cursor – AI friendly software development environment 
• Gemini Code Assist – agent from Google that can plugged into software development environments
• Open AI Codex – agent and tools from Open AI that can plugged into software development environments
• AI Studio – useful tool for prompt formulation
• Gemini API – for calling AI models from your own software
• Open AI APIs – documentation for accessing the models behind ChatGPT from your own software
• Vega – data visualization and maps (ask the above AI code assistants to make a Vega diagram or map then add your own data)
• Gephi – network visualization
• scikit-learn.org – Machine learning in Python

General Resources

• Google My Maps – make your own maps
• Desktop version of WeChat