These professors built AI tools that ask questions, instead of giving answers
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“A lot of AI tools in education are designed to make things more efficient,” he said. “Caisey capitalizes on precisely the opposite: the capacity to slow students down, to actually make them focus and to also make them consider very different ways of thinking about questions.”
File photo from the campus of the University of Michigan. (Stephen Frye / MediaNews Group) By Washington postPUBLISHED: April 4, 2026 at 5:27 AM EDT Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...By Susan SvrlugaTHE WASHINGTON POST Something shifted in Dan Wang’s class at Columbia Business School in the fall of 2022. Instead of his students showing up prepared with persuasive arguments about business decisions, many students had asked ChatGPT to summarize case studies. It was understandable that they wanted to finish their homework more efficiently, he said. But that made class discussions more challenging. Now, students still pull out their phones to prepare for his class – but they talk to an artificial intelligence app Wang designed. Before they are faced with tough questions from the professor and classmates, they argue at home with Caisey, as Wang nicknamed it. “A lot of AI tools in education are designed to make things more efficient,” he said. “Caisey capitalizes on precisely the opposite: the capacity to slow students down, to actually make them focus and to also make them consider very different ways of thinking about questions.” While many faculty members worry about the impact of AI on students’ ability to think, some are harnessing the technology to create new ways for them to learn, even designing specialized apps for their students. Instead of spitting out answers, AI tools infused with faculty expertise are intended to help students think through solutions while ...