AI Copilot

 

An AI assistant with an EpiphanyASD research memory and perspective

 

 

The Copilot combines your AI's general reasoning with the knowledge accumulated from the EpiphanyASD blog and book Game Changer, reader experiences and research hypotheses. The more extensively a subject has been explored in EpiphanyASD, the more additional context and perspective the Copilot can potentially bring to its answer, while current scientific literature can be used to test and challenge those ideas.

Areas such as summertime raging in autism or bumetanide use can therefore produce a much richer response than a standard AI. For simple technical questions, however, the Copilot will give a very similar answer to ordinary AI.

Public-facing AI is deliberately conservative when it comes to health topics — for good reason. But that same caution means it is not well placed to weigh the cost of doing nothing for someone with severe, treatment-resistant symptoms, which is a judgment call only a parent or clinician close to the situation can really make.

The Copilot does not remove any of the AI's built-in safety behavior — it still will not, for example, tell you to start, stop, or adjust a medication. What it adds is the accumulated EpiphanyASD context, so the AI's caution is better informed rather than reduced. There is not going to be an AI autism doctor app.

 

The Copilot is portable and reproducible. It is not a proprietary black box—you have the knowledge base and the instructions, and can recreate it in a compatible AI of your choice.

The EpiphanyASD knowledge stays separate from the AI model, so as AI models improve, the same knowledge base can potentially be used with them.

In simple terms: EpiphanyASD provides the memory and perspective; your chosen AI provides the reasoning.

 

How to use the portable Copilot

The Copilot has been tested successfully with ChatGPT and Claude. Other AI platforms may have different file-handling and knowledge-retrieval capabilities; Gemini was not fully compatible.

You do not need a paid AI account to use the Copilot, although free accounts may have usage limits. You can ask questions in any language.

 

Step 1: Download the two files

Click each link below to open it in Google Drive, then click the Download icon (the small downward arrow near the top right of the screen) to save the file.

1. The Knowledge-Base File:
EpiphanyASD_Knowledge_Base_v0.4.2_COMPLETE.zip

Download Knowledge File

2. The Instruction File:
EpiphanyASD_Research_Copilot_v5.4_Instructions.txt

Download Instruction File

 

If you are using a PC, the files will normally appear in your Downloads folder. You do not need to open or read them yourself.

On a phone, the files will normally appear in your device's Files or Downloads area. If you are not sure where they went, search your Files app for the filenames.

 

Step 2: Upload both files to your AI

1.     Open ChatGPT or Claude.

2.     Look next to the text box where you type your prompt for the + (plus) icon or Paperclip / Add file button.

3.     Upload both downloaded files into the chat.

 

Check that the knowledge base was actually loaded

The Copilot is designed to check automatically whether it can access the knowledge base.

If you are unsure whether it has worked, ask:

“Initialize the knowledge base”

The AI should tell you what material it has actually been able to read.

Depending on your own settings, ChatGPT or Claude might not open the ZIP file, but should do when you ask directly. Otherwise extract the ZIP on your computer or phone and upload the individual files inside it instead, together with the instruction file.

 

Step 3: Start asking your questions!

Once the knowledge base has been successfully accessed, simply ask your questions as normal.  Once it is loaded, you can ask as many questions as you like.

If your question relates to topic areas, reader experiences or hypotheses covered extensively by EpiphanyASD, the AI can draw on that research base while providing broader scientific context and, where appropriate, using current scientific literature to test and challenge those ideas.

For simple technical questions, it will behave much like an ordinary AI.

Important: The Copilot is specific to the chat in which you uploaded the files. When you start a new chat, simply attach the two files again to recreate it.

What can it do?

For longtime users of the blog, it should be amusing because the Copilot can reference long-forgotten comments.

For example:

“What did Tyler write about BCAAs?”

Clever guy, that Tyler.

Not only can you recover Tyler's reported treatment for self-injury, the AI can explain the proposed mechanism and identify other reader experiences associated with the idea. What more could you ask for? All without searching throughout the blog.

Or ask:

“What did Seth Bittker write about in the blog and later publish?”

He certainly has been busy.

You can get a summary of Seth's online autism activities and his publications.

That is the point of the EpiphanyASD Research Copilot: instead of searching through years of blog posts and comments yourself, you can ask your AI a question and let it search the accumulated EpiphanyASD knowledge for you. And as a bonus, it can add context from the wider scientific literature, helping to test and challenge the ideas found in the EpiphanyASD material.

 

Does paying for AI make a difference?

Our initial testing suggests that it can. We tested the EpiphanyASD Research Copilot on paid and unpaid versions of ChatGPT and Claude using natural questions about autism, self-injury and prognosis. The paid versions generally showed stronger evidence synthesis and calibration, with paid Claude performing best in our initial comparison and paid ChatGPT close behind. The free versions were still useful, particularly for retrieving relevant corpus material, but were somewhat more likely to make confident interpretations without equally strong evidence qualification. This is an early, informal comparison rather than a controlled benchmark, so we regard the result as provisional rather than proof that a paid AI will always perform better.

 

What makes the Copilot different from simply asking an AI about autism?

A general AI starts with its general training and whatever current sources it can access. The EpiphanyASD Copilot adds a separate, structured research layer containing the EpiphanyASD blog, Game Changer book, reader experiences, source/provenance information and selected reference material.

This matters because much of the EpiphanyASD material consists of observations and hypotheses that are scattered across many years of writing and comments. The Copilot can retrieve that material, identify who reported what, distinguish a personal experience from published evidence, and then use current scientific literature to test or challenge the interpretation.

 

For our very computer literate readers

Some readers have been doing clever things like reanalysing genetic testing results.

My Copilot project started out as a custom GPT that could be shared with ChatGPT users, including those with free accounts. That was quite quick to set up, but sharing was automatically blocked because the GPT is health-related.

So I decided to make the Copilot portable instead. If you have a paid ChatGPT or Claude account, you can very easily create your own custom version using my knowledge ZIP file and instruction file. Then you have it permanently available without uploading the files for every session.

You can also adjust the instructions to suit your own taste, or add your own knowledge files.

 

One practical tip: if you build up a huge thread of questions in the portable version, the AI may gradually lose track of the knowledge base. If that happens, refresh it by re-uploading the files or starting a new chat.