In December last year I wrote about what was then a relatively new technology, Generative AI (GAI). Seven months later it has become one of the most exciting and scary developments we have seen in recent years, it has the potential to create transformative change that will affect our very way of life, how we work and the area I am most interested in, how we learn. Initially it was all about a particular type of GAI called ChatGPT 3.5, a large language model funded by Microsoft. But the market reacted quickly and there are now many more models, including Bard from Google, Llama 2 from Meta and a pay for version of ChatGPT imaginatively entitled ChatGPT 4. And just to make this a little more complicated, in early February, Microsoft unveiled a new version of Bing (Microsoft’s search engine that competes with Google) that includes an AI chatbot powered by the same technology as ChatGPT.

One of the reasons for its rapid adoption is it’s so easy to use, you can literally chat with it as you might a human. However as with people, to have a meaningful conversation you need to plan what you want to say, be clear in how you say it whilst providing sufficient context to avoid misunderstanding.

“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.” The Turing Test – Alan Turing

Prompting – rubbish in rubbish out

Prompting is how we talk with these GAI models. The quality and specificity of the prompt can significantly influence the response you get. A well-crafted prompt can lead to a coherent and relevant answer, whilst a poorly formulated one offers up ambiguity and irrelevant information. If only people thought as deeply about how they communicate with each other, we might avoid a lot of problems!

How to prompt
• Be clear, use specific and unambiguous language.
• Provide context as to why you are asking the question or who are, and write in complete sentences. For example, “would William Shakespeare be considered a great writer if he were to be published today?”
• Ask open ended questions, you will get more detailed and creative responses.
• Set rules such as the tone required or length of an answer, limiting it to so many words, sentence or paragraphs. For example, “in a sentence could you provide a motivational response as to why learning is important?”
• Ask a follow up question if you don’t get the answer you want. GAI is conversational and will remember what you asked last. For example, if you don’t think the answer goes into sufficient detail, say “could you provide more detail as to why this particular event was considered so important?”.
• Provide examples of what you want will result in far more accurate answers. For example, why not copy in the report you wrote last time and ask GAI to update it with new information but keeping the same style and within 10% of the word count.

……And although there is no need to be polite, I have to admit to saying please and thank you.

Types of questions

ChatGPT is very flexible when it comes to answering question, the secret is in getting the prompt right. Here are just a few examples with responses from ChatGPT.

• General knowledge, Q When was Winston Churchill born? A Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874.
• Explainer questions, Q Can you explain in 5 words why Churchill was considered a great prime minister? A Inspiring leadership during wartime victory.
• Comparison questions, Q In a sentence can you compare Winston Churchill with Boris Johnson? A. Winston Churchill was a historical wartime leader known for his inspirational leadership during World War II, while Boris Johnson is a contemporary British politician who served as Prime Minister from 2019 to 2022.
• Others, ask…. How to do something e.g. bake a lemon drizzle cake, Can you define apprentice, Tell me a joke, Write me a poem in Japanese. You are limited only by your imagination.

Using it to learn

There are many ways in which this new technology can help with learning but it comes with a couple of health warnings, firstly – GenAI can be a great teacher but it cannot learn for you. It is an excellent resource, able to provide answers 24/7, clarify, summarise etc but ultimately you are the one that has to do the learning. Secondly – All GenAI bots suffer from something called hallucination, they make stuff up. The problem with this is as a learner you might not be able to tell because the answer will sound so authentic. In terms of how common this is, ChatGPT estimates around 20% of answers given might have something wrong with them, but they are working on reducing this to less than 10%.

Here are a few ways you can use GAI
• Summarise large amounts of text – copy a whole section of text into the model and ask it to summarise the most important points. Remember the more detail you give, the more relevant the response, e.g. Produce me a timeline of key events or identify the theories used in the answer.
• Question practice and marking – copy a question in and ask for the answer in 100 words. Paste your answer in and ask it to give you some feedback against the answer it has just produced. This can be further refined if you put in the examiners answer and if you have it, the marking guide.
• Ask for improvement – put into the model your answer with the examiners answer and ask how you might improve the writing style, making it more concise or highlighting the most important points.
• Produce flip cards – ask the model to write you 5 questions with answers in the style of a flip card.
• Produce an answer for a specific qualification – ask if it could produce an answer that is possible to complete in one hour, that would pass the AQA, GCSE exam in biology.
• Explain something – ask can you explain, for example Photosynthesis in simple terms or as an analogy or metaphor.
• Coach me – Ask it to review your answer against the examiners answer but rather than correct it ask it to coach you through the process so that you develop a better understanding.

There is little doubt as to the potential of GenAI in learning, its biggest impact may be in developing countries where there is limited access to teachers and few resources. Although most would agree that an educated world is a better one, there will need to be some safeguards. It cant be left to the open market, education is simply too important.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”
Nelson Mandela

And If you want to see some of these tools in action as well as hear Sal Khan talk about Khanmigo, his version of a teacher chatbot, see below.
• Sal Khan talks about Khanmigo
• ChatGPT in action for studying and exams
• Revise SMARTER, not harder: How to use ChatGPT to ace your exams