Wikipedia

Draft:Refine Technologies

Refine Technologies
Refine
TypePrivate
IndustryArtificial intelligence
Founded2025
Founders
HeadquartersUnited States,
ProductsRefine (AI research-paper review)
Websitewww.refine.ink

Refine Technologies, Inc., doing business as Refine, is an American artificial intelligence company founded in 2025. It develops a tool, also called Refine, that produces referee-style feedback on academic research papers, with the stated aim of helping authors and journal editors identify mathematical, logical, and clarity problems in drafts before publication.[1][2][3] The company was co-founded by the economist Benjamin Golub and Yann Calvó López, and its tool has been used primarily within academic economics.[2][1][3]

History

edit

Refine was founded in 2025 by Benjamin Golub, an economist, and Yann Calvó López, a master's student in computational science and engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).[3] In an interview with the Catalan daily Ara, Calvó López said the company released its first product in October 2025.[4]

In early 2026, Refine was named a finalist in Harvard University's President's Innovation Challenge, competing in the Student Open track, and in May 2026 it won the track's grand prize of US$75,000.[3][5]

Product

edit

Refine analyzes drafts of academic papers and returns a report flagging mathematical errors, logical inconsistencies, gaps in argumentation, and clarity problems.[2][1] Documented use to date has been concentrated in economics.[1][3] The company offers a free trial and a paid mode.[2]

Reception

edit

The economist Joshua Gans recommended Refine for pre-submission review in a November 2025 post.[6] In December 2025, Golub discussed the tool at Princeton University's Markus' Academy during a lecture on artificial intelligence in economics research.[7]

Economist John H. Cochrane reviewed Refine in a February 2026 post on his blog The Grumpy Economist, writing that the feedback it produced on one of his own drafts was among the best he had received during his academic career.[2] In a March 2026 Financial Times column, the economics columnist Soumaya Keynes described Refine as "an impressive AI-powered reviewing tool that scours economics papers for errors", wrote that several of the top five economics journals were experimenting with it, and reported that, according to Golub, the tool was finding problems in at least a third of papers that had already been reviewed by referees at top journals.[1] That same month, Tyler Cowen wrote in Marginal Revolution that Refine could be used to assess the quality of past economics papers.[8] The organizers of the 2026 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation announced in the conference's call for papers that authors could request optional AI-generated pre-submission feedback from Refine.[9] A June 2026 working paper by the economist Alexis Akira Toda evaluated several AI models, including Refine, on their ability to find errors in published economics papers; Toda recounted that the editor of Econometrica had run an accepted paper through Refine and asked the authors to respond to the report it generated.[10] In a June 2026 interview, the economist Guido Imbens, a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, cited Refine as an example of AI tools that help correct manuscript problems before publication.[11]

References

edit
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Keynes, Soumaya (19 March 2026). "Economists have caught the AI bug". Opinion. Financial Times. Retrieved 16 June 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Cochrane, John H. (24 February 2026). "Refine". The Grumpy Economist. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Goisman, Matt (3 April 2026). "Three SEAS start-ups named President's Innovation Challenge finalists". Harvard SEAS News. Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  4. ↑ ARA.AD (30 May 2026). "L'emprenedor andorrà que triomfa amb una IA que detecta errors de raonament" [The Andorran entrepreneur succeeding with an AI that detects reasoning errors]. Ara (in Catalan). Retrieved 16 June 2026.
  5. ↑ Goisman, Matt (12 May 2026). "Refine claims President's Innovation Challenge grand prize". Harvard SEAS News. Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Retrieved 16 June 2026.
  6. ↑ Gans, Joshua (26 November 2025). "What to do about AI referee reports?". Joshua Gans' Newsletter. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  7. ↑ Balsinde, Pablo (18 December 2025). "Ben Golub: Modern AI For Economics Research" (PDF). Markus' Academy. Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  8. ↑ Cowen, Tyler (23 March 2026). "When will "the research paper" disappear in economics?". Marginal Revolution. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  9. ↑ "Call for Papers". EC '26. ACM SIGecom. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  10. ↑ Toda, Alexis Akira (3 June 2026). "Can AI Refute Economic Theory? Evidence from Beyond the Knowledge Cutoff". arXiv:2606.05383 [econ.GN].
  11. ↑ Imbens, Guido (15 June 2026). "Guido Imbens: «No sabemos si la IA elevará el nivel general o si aumentará la desigualdad»" [Guido Imbens: "We don't know whether AI will raise the general level or increase inequality"]. Ethic (Interview) (in Spanish). Interviewed by Toni Roldán. Retrieved 16 June 2026.
edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Refine_Technologies&oldid=1359686744"