Expert tips to help your kids get the most out of ChatGPT as they return to school

Artificial intelligence (AI) aims to completely and forever transform the way we work, consume content, search for information, and interact with each other. And the truth is that, by now, the changes it's making to our habits are already more than evident. Especially for students . According to a recent study by the Knowledge and Development Foundation (CYD), 89% of university students already use tools like ChatGPT , Gemini , Deepseek, or Grok to help them get through their classes. Furthermore, 35% use them daily.

Coinciding with the return to school , which begins this week, experts consulted by ABC point out that it's not a bad thing for young people to try to take advantage of technology to improve their academic results. That is, of course, as long as they understand how it works and how to use it correctly, something that isn't entirely clear, since only 34% of students have received specific training in this field. And not all possible uses of generative artificial intelligence are valid . Not at all.

In the opinion of Juan Ignacio Rouyet, a professor and expert in AI and Ethics at the International University of La Rioja, the use of generative artificial intelligence should be prohibited for students until they reach the final stages of secondary education. "Students must first be able to do everything ChatGPT does on their own, just as before using a calculator they must have learned how to multiply or divide. I wouldn't recommend its use until the final stages of compulsory education; in fact, it should be prohibited until the student is at least 16 years old. From then on, I would not only allow it, but I would also teach them in class how to take advantage of it ," explains this expert.

Pablo Haya Coll, a researcher at the Computer Linguistics Laboratory at the Autonomous University of Madrid and director of Business and Language Analytics at the Institute of Knowledge Engineering, is along the same lines. Although he's not so sure about the need to be so restrictive regarding age, the professor emphasizes that "chatbots should be a support tool that doesn't replace knowledge acquisition": "We have to continue learning to write, reason, synthesize, and compare ideas on our own without depending on machines."

Obviously, students should always be wary of the data and information provided by the machine , as they may contain errors. Before accepting an answer as correct, they should try to verify it using other sources. They should also avoid copying the content provided by the robot and passing it off as their own. "To begin with, that's plagiarism because you didn't write it, and using it in a project is considered a crime," says Haya Coll.

Although there is no tool on the market to date that allows teachers to definitively verify that a text was created using AI, machines have a very distinctive way of expressing themselves; overly formal and repetitive. Teachers with a little technological knowledge will quickly recognize the attempt at deception.

Although ChatGPT makes mistakes like any machine of its kind, its use can be especially useful when starting to research a specific topic or trying to clarify any doubts . "I always tell my students that chatbots help you clear the path. Before, you had to start a project and didn't know where to start reading, so you'd go to Google and find fifty pages, and that could be overwhelming. Generative AI can help make the learning path more targeted through the direct questions you ask the machine. You can also find the specific sources you need to consult through links," says Rouyet.

Haya Coll points out that ChatGPT, for example, has had a dedicated version for students for a couple of months. Called "study mode," it allows the bot to share questions, tips, and suggestions designed to help students reflect on and better understand the subject matter. The chatbot's responses are structured to be accessible and adapted to the student's level.

"The conversations are very focused. For example, you can ask it to solve math problems or perform detailed text analysis. It works very well, according to the tests I've been able to conduct. It's very useful for reviewing lessons or understanding topics. It's very similar to having a tutor by your side," says the expert.

Chatbots, just as they create images from nothing and answer almost any question, can help students complete the most tedious tasks. Teachers surveyed point out that they work very well for creating indexes or bibliographies —as long as the student shares the necessary information to complete the task. They can also be very useful for summarizing notes or completed work. Simply upload them to the tool and begin working on them through written requests.

As we've explained, talking machines of this kind can make mistakes and provide false information. For example, they tend to be quite bad at sharing quotes with users , whether from books or characters. "The more well-known a topic is, the more difficult it is for the AI ​​to make mistakes. Where I've encountered the most academic failures is in finding quotes. Applications often tend to share them with the user without having performed any internet searches, simply making them up," says the researcher from the Computer Linguistics Laboratory at the Autonomous University.