Don’t use AI to cheat at school. It is better to study.

Hello! We’re back with a new bonus edition of About technology: AIa pop-up newsletter that teaches you about artificial intelligence, how it works and how to use it.

Last week I discussed how to turn your chatbot into a life coach. Now let’s move to an area where many have been experimenting with AI since last year: education.

Generative AI’s specialty is language — guessing which word comes next — and students soon realized they could use ChatGPT and other chatbots to write essays. This created an uncomfortable situation in many classrooms. As it turns out, it’s easy to get caught cheating with Generative AI because it’s prone to making things up, a phenomenon known as “hallucinating.”

But generative AI can also be used as a study assistant. Some tools create highlights in lengthy research papers and even answer questions about the material. Others may compile study aids such as quizzes and flashcards.

One caveat to keep in mind: When studying, it is paramount that the information is correct, and to get the most accurate results, you should direct AI tools to focus on information from trusted sources rather than retrieve data from the Internet. I’ll discuss how to do that below.

Research

First, let’s look at one of the most daunting study tasks: reading and annotating long papers. Some AI tools, such as Humata AI, Word Tune Reading and various plugins within ChatGPT act as research assistants that summarize documents for you.

I prefer Humata.AI because it answers your questions and shows highlights right in the source material, allowing you to check accuracy.

On the Humata.AI website, I uploaded a PDF of a scientific research paper on the accuracy of smartwatches in cardio fitness tracking. Then I clicked the “Ask” button and asked him how Garmin watches performed in the study. It scrolled down to the relevant part of the document that mentioned Garmin, made highlights and answered my question.

Most interesting to me was when I asked the bot if my understanding of the article was correct – that wearable devices such as Garmins and Fitbits on average tracked cardio fitness fairly accurately, but there were a few individuals whose results were very wrong. “Yes, you’re right,” the bot replied. It continued with a summary of the study and listed the page numbers where this conclusion was cited.

Studying

Generative AI can also help with rote learning. While every chatbot generates flashcards or quizzes when you paste in the information you’re studying, I decided to use ChatGPT because it has plugins that generate study aids pulled from specific web articles or documents.

(Only subscribers who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus can use plugins. We explained how to use them in a previous newsletter.)

I wanted ChatGPT to make flashcards for me to learn Chinese vocabulary words. To do this, I installed two plugins: Link Reader, which lets me tell the bot to use data from a specific website, and MetaMentor, a plugin that automatically generates flashcards.

In the ChatGPT dashboard, I selected both plugins. Then I wrote this prompt:

Act as a teacher. I am a native English speaker learning Chinese. Take the vocabulary words and phrases from this link and make a set of flashcards for each: https://preply.com/en/blog/basic-chinese-words/

About five minutes later, the bot responded with a link where I could download the flashcards. They were exactly what I asked for.

Then I wanted my tutor to question me. I told ChatGPT that I was studying for the written exam to get my California motorcycle license. Again, using the Link Reader plugin, I pasted a link to the latest motorcycle handbook from the California DMV (an important step because traffic laws vary by state and rules are updated from time to time) and asked for a multiple-choice quiz.

The bot processed the information in the handbook and produced a quiz, where I asked five questions at a time.

Finally, to test my understanding of the topic, I instructed ChatGPT to ask me questions without presenting multiple choice answers. The bot adapted accordingly and I passed the quiz.

I would have loved to have these tools when I was in school. And probably with them if fellow students would have gotten better grades.

What’s next?

Next week, in the final installment of this how-to newsletter, we’ll take everything we’ve learned and apply it to enrich the time we spend with our families.