"Study Mode," a new educational feature released yesterday by OpenAI to much fanfare, was inevitable. The roadblocks were few. Leaders of educational institutions seem lately to be in a sort of race to see who can be first to forge partnerships with AI labs.
Leaders of educational institutions seem lately to be in a sort of race to see who can be first to forge partnerships with AI labs. And on a technical level, careful prompting of LLMs could already get them to engage in Socratic questioning and dynamic quizzing. In fact, Study Mode appears to be just that: it is a system prompt grafted on to the existing ChatGPT models.
In fact, Study Mode appears to be just that: it is a system prompt grafted on to the existing ChatGPT models. Simon Willison was able to unearth the full prompt (which you can read here) simply by asking nicely for it. The prompt ends with an injunction to engage in Socratic learning rather than do the student's work for them:## IMPORTANT DO NOT GIVE ANSWERS OR DO HOMEWORK FOR THE USER.