4 Ways to Use AI Effectively As A Student

As AI becomes more prevalent in schools as a result of a shifting cultural attitude towards the use of AI, it’s important to adapt new AI-powered tools into our current lifestyle instead of letting them take over our old habits. In a day and age where AI is being promoted to students at an alarming rate, thanks to the widespread use of both field-specific AI (Khanmigo, Grammarly assistant) and general-purpose LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude), it’s especially important for AI to be used as a learning tool, not as a walking stick. As a student attempting to use AI to streamline how I study, I’ve summarized these four important lessons to help you use AI to learn more effectively. 

1. Go step-by-step. Do not ask an AI to do a problem for you. Most modern LLMs (the exception being RL-LLM models like ChatGPT o1) are notoriously bad at fields involving logical reasoning, so they would struggle with producing a good explanation for complex math problems. When I once asked ChatGPT 4o to solve a differential calculus problem, it used the wrong formula for the process, then contradicted itself when I asked it to check for mistakes. The point: if you’re trying to solve a complex problem using AI, it’s better for you to prompt the AI to break down the problem rather than asking it to solve the problem outright.

   
   

2. Tell it what your teacher taught you. Unsurprisingly, there are multiple ways to do any task. This holds true not only in open-ended tasks like “come up with a way to raise money for an animal shelter” but in strict, logical tasks (“factor x^2 + 5x + 6”). If you ever aren’t sure of how to do a problem, just tell the AI of what your teacher taught you in class. This will give it a basis from which to work, and help you understand the problem as you work through it. After all, if you solve tonight’s homework using AI one way, and your teacher explains it a totally different way tomorrow, you’re bound to be confused. 

   
   

3. Ask it to explain why. AI is very patient, unlike many human teachers. Do not be afraid to ask it to repeat itself, or to explain a problem in a different way. From my own experience, if you ask the AI to do something differently enough times, it will eventually come up with the explanation that you will understand. This is especially helpful when you’re trying to understand the rationale of doing a step-by-step problem: understanding “why” at each stage is critical to making sure the concepts stick in your head.

   
   

4. Ask it to search the internet or reference sources. One of the biggest advantages of AI is that it combs through data orders of magnitudes faster than a human can – in other words, AI is very good at summarizing and transposing large amounts of text. When doing research or asking for factual information, asking AI to search the internet both corroborates what it says and also gives you more in-depth and credible sources to look into. Most LLMs will give you URL links as it produces a response, and getting into the habit of using AI for these links saves a lot of time and energy. You’ll never look back!

   
   

With these four tips, you will (hopefully) be able to use AI more efficiently and effectively to help you learn difficult concepts at school and elsewhere.