The school year starts soon for many students, and ChatGPT has announced a new “study mode” that aims to prevent—or at least, encourage against—students taking homework shortcuts.
The mode is designed around the Socratic method, so when activated, OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot rejects direct requests for answers, instead guiding the user with open-ended questions. The new study mode is available to most logged-in users of ChatGPT, including those on the free version.
OpenAI has significantly disrupted the education system over the past few years, with students becoming some of the earliest adopters of ChatGPT. Even so, OpenAI claims the bot is currently an overall boon to learners—if asked to roleplay as a synthetic tutor.
“When ChatGPT is prompted to teach or tutor, it can significantly improve academic performance,” says Leah Belsky, a vice president of education at OpenAI, “but when it’s just used as an answer machine, it can hinder learning.”
The problem is, no matter how engaging ChatGPT’s study mode becomes as OpenAI iterates on this feature, it exists just a toggle click away from ChatGPT, with direct answers (and potential fabrications) about whatever class you’re working on. That could be quite hard to resist for younger users still developing their frontal lobe.
It’s true that students on the hunt for easy ways to avoid engaging with the substance of a course have always had resources available to them, like the CliffNotes series of literature summaries. Still, the immediacy and personalized nature of chatbots feels like an escalation. Multiple AI-focused smartphone apps that can solve homework problems with just a snapshot, like ByteDance’s Gauth, rocket in popularity whenever the school year gets back into session. Many educators have recently raised concerns about the continued, and often secretive, use of AI by students.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman doesn’t buy it. “I remember when I was in school—junior high—Google first came out and all the teachers freaked out,” Altman said on a recent podcast. Similar to the internet and the calculator, Altman’s sees AI as a tool capable of helping you “think better.”