OpenAI has finally built a version of ChatGPT designed with teens in mind, and the Study Mode approach of guiding rather than just answering is the right call for anyone who wants their kid to learn. Wow! This will be either super helpful or super distracting. If this feature is implemented in a way that actually educates rather than sending teenage minds down rabbit holes, that will be a minor victory.
Having grown up without good computers, smartphones, the internet, and AI, I can only imagine what a study utopia this would be. My girls did have everything except AI (until the very end of their academic journeys), so they were still forced to learn to read, write, and analyze well (they did have Google for research, though, which I did not). But I digress.
Teens are much more tech-savvy than we realize. They have, and always will, find ways to circumvent any restrictions, schedules, or potentially harmful interactions. And while I applaud OpenAI for efforts to make online learning and AI interactions safer and more educational (think learning rather than just getting the answer), I worry that without careful parental guidance, teens will just drop ChatGPT and go elsewhere.
And I also wonder about the “age-prediction” system and whether it will actually be any good at correctly identifying a teen from someone acting as a teen. That could become ugly quickly.