OpenAI's education head says students should use ChatGPT as a tool, not 'an answer machine'
"Workers who use AI in the workforce are incredibly more productive," Leah Belsky, who's been leading OpenAI's education team since 2024, said on an episode of the company's podcast on Friday.
So learning to use the technology, she said, should start early. "Any graduate who leaves institution today needs to know how to use AI in their daily life," she said. "And that will come in both where they're applying for jobs as well as when they start their new job."
Most schools have so far sought ways to prevent students from using AI rather than encouraging it or teaching it. This is partly because AI use in school is considered cheating. There is also concern that using AI can cause so-called "brain rot."
Belsky thinks about it differently.
"AI is ultimately a tool," she said, at one point comparing it to a calculator. "What matters most in an education space is how that tool is used. If students use AI as an answer machine, they are not going to learn. And so part of our journey here is to help students and educators use AI in ways that will expand critical thinking and expand creativity."
The "core literacy" students should develop, she said, is coding.
"Now, with vibe coding and now that there are all sorts of tools that make coding easier, I think we're going to get to a place where every student should not only learn how to use AI generally, but they should learn to use AI to create images, to create applications, to write code," she said.
Vibe coding is the process of prompting AI in natural language to write code for whatever you want. It's been widely embraced, but most avoid using it for core technology since AI code is prone to errors. Anyone vibe coding would need some level of coding knowledge, or know someone who does, to check the AI's work.
Perhaps the biggest concern about using AI in education is that it removes the element of "productive struggle" — a crucial part of how people learn and master new material. Belsky says OpenAI is developing technology to counter that.
This week, OpenAI introduced "Study Mode" in ChatGPT, which provides students with "guiding questions that calibrate responses to their objective and skill level to help them build deeper understanding," according to OpenAI's website.
OpenAI is not the only technology company thinking about this topic. Kira Learning is a startup chaired by Google Brain founder Andrew Ng. It first launched in 2021 to help teachers without a background in computer science teach the subject effectively. The company launched a slate of AI agents earlier this year.
The aim is to introduce "friction" into students' conversations with AI at the right stages so that they actually have a productive struggle and learn through the experience, Andre Pasinetti, cofounder and CEO of Kira, told Business Insider.
For the near future, at least, the onus will likely be on tech companies to spearhead new ways to keep the learning in learning, as universities and educational institutions scramble to keep up.
Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, also talked about the state of the university in a conversation with podcaster Azeem Azhar this week.
"There's a lot of hand-wringing about 'How do we stop people from cheating' and not looking at 'What should we be teaching and testing?'" he said."The whole system is set up to incentivize getting good grades. And that's exactly the skill that will be obsolete."
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