If you want an AI-powered tool to get a better grasp of a handful of papers, Consensus is a great option. It's an AI-powered academic search engine that lets you find and understand the most relevant science and research papers. With Copilot and Consensus Meter tools powered by OpenAI and its own large language models, it can give you a leg up by covering a lot of research and offering AI analysis. The service is geared for students, researchers, science labs, clinicians and health care professionals.
Another tool worth a look is Scholarcy, which converts academic papers into interactive summary flashcards. It can handle a variety of file types and offers more advanced abilities like summarization, analysis, organization and note-taking. Scholarcy can help you think at a higher level by giving you a better handle on complex information.
For explanations of complex subjects, Explainpaper could be just what you need. You can upload papers, highlight sections you don't understand, and get detailed explanations. It also can summarize papers and analyze multiple papers at once, so you can dig deeper into research. The service has a variety of pricing options for different needs and budgets.
Last, SummarizePaper offers a basic but potentially useful option by using AI to summarize scientific papers from arXiv. You can ask natural language questions of the papers and get answers immediately. It's free to use and maintained by an astrophysics researcher who wants to make research results more accessible to everyone.