The AI Cheat Cheat: Students’ Edition

Let’s understand what tools you’re going to learn about, and how they’re used, and why they can’t be used to do an entire homework assignment for you, but how they can help you do it for an A+, regardless of what your grade was this most recent run of report cards 😉

What types of AI are there?

• Narrow AI
  • YouTube watch next recommendations, Google’s alternate search results, spelling corrections, among others. These are unsupervised AI, in that they are mostly a program that analyzes the data previously given to it, such as what you just searched for, to attempt to offer you results, hopefully that are more or less relevant.
  • If you click on those “did you mean..?” or the “People also searched for”, then that is enforcing this Narrow AI, to be better at those results later. A dataset is collected and used to regenerate it, however it does NOT use the data to keep itself up to date, and thus, they generally become out of date or are wrong, quickly and often.
• Wide (Model) AI
  • Lightly trained, but unaware of itself as a program, used for phone assistants like Google Home, Siri, and Bixby. They collect and usually anonymize the data that you give it, to train on-device data it’s building of you, so that it knows what’s relevant to you and what isn’t. This would be what you clicked on on a news feed, so it knows you want to see more about hip hop feuds between Florida and Toronto stars, or if you want to learn about University options and lifestyles.
• Algorithmic AI
  • Machine Learning AI, Google Gemini/Bard, Apple Intelligence, Samsung AI, however also used on many widely used services such as ChatGPT & DALL-E, Microsoft Co-pilot, Claude AI, among many others. Usually, Generative AI is bundled in this, but we will classify it separately next. Algorithmic AI works by accessing other models, and then running the data through each, so it can classify and build a response based on the data you give it.
  • Does it need to infer a video or audio file? Does it need to change a language? Confirm and edit a document? Wide AI is a model backed with smart learning and speech recognition to do things like give you content you want, but filtered and catalogued perfectly, and can be summarized, and modified to get you a better understanding.
  • On a technical level, it (whichever model you’re using, ChatGPT, etc.) accesses thousands of databases quickly and efficiently to understand every single person, every speech impediment, every accent, and every language (however they generally do state to be used in wider areas with more common languages), and do that all with combinations or lack there-of, and in a second or less. It needs to understand your specific, localized dialect, and be correct.
  • They generally do not learn and create new content, unless they’re web-attached to a….
• Generative AI
  • Many of the same concepts and technologies as the above, however it learns and creates new output from the data you give it. The Algorithmic AI is more database focused and classifications of data to make things better, more efficient, and thus in whole, better, whereas Generative AI is used to create new output and things that don’t exist currently. Creative concepts and figuring out new ways to battle currently impossible things, like curing Cancer, etc.
  • Our featured image today was generated using only 4 prompts. This Generative AI ran what I gave it through who knows how many Algorithmic AI’s to learn and understand what I wanted, while giving me the data that at that time, didn’t exist. The algorithm is learning and making it so that it doesn’t have to use 4 prompts for the next person to ask the same question I did, working together with Algorithmic AI’s, but also being able to express itself. Kinda scary? Fear not:
    

How do I get away with using AI?

Here’s how! Unless your teacher directly said no; sorry, I can’t supersede those rules, but if they did not say it, or, maybe you’re a teacher whose secretly trying to get insider info, or better yet, trying to learn how to incorporate AI into your lesson plan, and if you are, welcome, but also, your guide is coming soon, don’t worry 🙂

• Be Smrt. I mean, Smart.
  
  • Think of it from a wider view than just you and your teacher, or you and your team. If you’re an average-grade student, or perhaps you’re reaching out to credit recovery programs, or heck, maybe you’re on the honour roll, broadening your view to beyond the blinders of yourself and whoever you’re talking too, is part of growing up and you need to do it faster these days. If you’re an average or lower grade student and you submit an entire essay explaining thermodynamic pressure differentials in a vacuum, and it’s perfectly written and spell checked and edited by a Pulitzer winning editor.. you might as well have submitted one sentence that says “I did not do anything”.
    
• Be Smrt..?
  
  • Your teacher, project partners, and everyone else is smarter than you at this point. However, fret not, let’s make the AI do the hard work for you! Say you don’t understand thermodynamic pressure differentials in a vacuum. Go to ChatGPT right now, and search up what YOU THINK it is, why it’s important, and ask it to “explain this to me like I’m 10 years old” or whatever number you think you can adapt to understanding it (no shame here, I’ve used that prompt myself, and I’m 41!).
    
• Be smart!
  
  • Once you understand it, now frame it in the way you can understand it. Thermo. Hot. Dynamics. It’s Changing. Pressure. Lot’s of it is inside. Differentials. That stuff is constantly changing or moving or both. Vacuum….. Your teacher hates you and doesn’t want you to succeed… ahem.. sorry.., Vacuum, there’s no air pressure outside or inside. What? That makes it easier, right? Right…? ^{Is this thing on??}
  • Now you understand it amazingly, because you had the tools of AI do the heavy lifting for you. That AI will never get bored, tired, not know something, need to take a pee break, or anything you throw at it. Ask it 50,000 times, and it will keep answering you with a great attitude, and different ways to make you grasp the idea best. Write that down now, and you have a winning paper, or piece of information to contribute.

… and you didn’t even have to put your socks on 😛

But Jeff (hey, that’s my name!), I need something for my <blank> project, not physics..
Time to learn about prompts and talking to machines and algorithms, which also is a great survival skill once our machine overlords take over.. right? Wrong. Students, you need AI just as it needs you and the rest of humans. There are millions of jobs out that are not in danger of AI taking it over, and they all have wide ranges of education – high school diploma havers to doctorate achievers, everyone has a future in this and the next generation, but first, we need to talk to it.

Talk to it like you talk to yourself in your head. Use the same words you know, bad words, slang, slurs, everything, and don’t try to change it, break it down, simplify, anything. Even if you are English as a second language, or you’re using a model in your own language, do it in the way that makes it the most comfortable way and easiest way for you.

Let the AI do ALL the hard work!

This is what the future of AI is. Farmers invented the plow to make farming easier, and we did the same thing with machine learning. AI is a tool in which you can use it to do ALL the hard work and heavy lifting for your project.

What are you having problems with? I don’t understand what you mean by Dynamics. Great, go ask ChatGPT exactly that, “I don’t understand what dynamics is, in terms of physics at a high school level”. Wait, where did you get that little bit at the end? That’s OK, that’s me helping you, and you seeing what I did. AI learns from what you give it and giving it a little bit of salt and pepper on your steak (watermelon or otherwise), makes it better, and once it gives you the answer, you’re going to learn what dynamics means, twice. First time is right now! You dynamically thought about something beyond your original scope. Now go write it down as you understand it again, but don’t worry if you don’t because that comes later.

So we understand how we can use it and get away with it, but we’ve left out another important fact – what about the handing in of the subject, and the anti-AI systems in place to protect and catch full on cheaters? That’s OK, we’re not using ChatGPT to just copy and paste, we’re using that big ol’ bucket of pink pudding up behind your eyeballs, to re-generate what it says, running it through the “Generative non-A, I” known as you and your brain. Explain to ChatGPT right now, but ask it a question. Let’s break down the prompt we’re going to give it so you can understand how it works:

Prompts – not DOS or otherwise

There are 4 key words in the full prompt below that you can use to get powerful responses with minimal repeating yourself (sometimes you have too). Here’s the Full Prompt^_:

I am a high school student trying to learn about thermodynamic pressure differentials in a vacuum. My understanding of the term dynamics is <enter here your honest and truthful understanding, EVEN IF YOU'RE UNSURE IF YOU ARE CORRECT>. Is this right?

I am
Already the AI knows that you are the one asking something, so it already is changing how it responds. Had you asked “My students are high school students…” then it would reply with different ways, grammar, and even the data and potential charts.

High School
It knows to use language and models designed for that level of education – no using Greek terminology and mathematics equations learned in 3rd year University, right?

Learn
Define things and break it down for me more than normal. Like a child asking you how something works, explain it so I can reference it again. Use languages and sentence structure that is simple and short, instead of longer and more verbose.

My understanding is
A great way to make the output reference things back to what you understand vs. the output of data, so you can reference what is already there, to the ways that it potentially is correct – you can change the little Micro SD memory card in your brain instead of searching through said pudding above and guessing and hoping it sticks.

See how it works?

Now write it out even more better (yes, I used that intentionally lol), and run it through the AI as many times as you need. It will NEVER grow tired, it will NEVER get upset that you don’t understand something, and it will know things that some people don’t know. The AI is your teacher 24/7, and knows how to talk to you so you can understand it, get the credits, and get out there doing what you want to do in life.