ChatGPT Study Mode is a new function within the artificial intelligence chatbot that aims to give students a more natural learning experience rather than simply answering questions for them, the company announced Tuesday.
Whereas typing in a question or topic into ChatGPT returns a textbook-style summary, Study Mode works with students, step by step, to help them come to the correct answer on their own. Students can chat with ChatGPT to gain better clarification on things they don’t understand, as though they were working with a tutor.
Study Mode will be available for free for Plus, Pro and Team users and will launch for ChatGPT Edu in the next few weeks.
Study Mode won’t simply respond like an answer engine. Even if a student gets frustrated and wants ChatGPT to just spit out the correct answer, it’ll refuse. Instead, it’ll try to continue working with students to help them get to the correct conclusion. For faculty and parents, there aren’t admin controls at the moment, meaning students can switch back to standard ChatGPT if they really want that straight answer. OpenAI, however, is looking to increase admin controls in the future.
With the release of ChatGPT in late 2023, the academic world was hit almost immediately. Suddenly, students had a word calculator trained on massive amounts of data, with the ability to spit out essays in seconds. The temptation to get immediate answers from ChatGPT has proven to be tempting for students and has made AI plagiarism a problem in classrooms and on college campuses. Teachers are complaining that students are deferring the hard work of thinking and problem-solving to AI. Teachers are also complaining that AI is hindering students’ abilities to think critically. Experts say that critical thinking is highly important for childhood development.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the Theo Von Podcast last week that with the advancement of AI models, education will need to change entirely. Because AI models will one day become smarter than humans in processing information, teaching needs to evolve with this new tool being widely used in society.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
