External AI Resources

Helpful Videos, Blogs, and Posts

  1. Practical AI for Instructors and Students: 5 video playlist by Wharton Interactive’s Faculty Director Ethan Mollick and Director of Pedagogy Lilach Mollick. An overview of AI large language models for educators and students. They take a practical approach and explore how the models work, and how to work effectively with each model, weaving in your own expertise. They also show how to use AI to make teaching easier and more effective, with example prompts and guidelines, as well as how students can use AI to improve their learning.
  2. One Useful thing blog by Wharton business professor Ethan Mollick providing faculty with ideas on how to utilize AI tools in the classroom.
    1. A Guide to Prompting AI (for what it is worth)
    2. Democratizing the Future of Education
    3. The Future of Education in a World of AI
  3. AI Canon. An intro guide to what LLMs (Large Language Models), Neural Networks, and other AI-related tools are. Links to various deeper dives are available in the intro.

Surveys (2023)

  1. Survey of 1,000 Hiring Managers shows that ~9 in 10 Hiring Managers believe ChatGPT experience can be more valuable than a college degree.
  2. Survey of 1,223 college students shows that 1/3 of them used ChatGPT for schoolwork during 22-23 academic year.
  3. Survey of 1,593 Americans found that taking a course in ChatGPT resulted in a raise for 80%, a promotion for 61%, and a new job offer for another 61%.
  4. Survey of 1,000 high school, undergraduate, and graduate teachers/professors found that 98% use ChatGPT, and 79% approve of student usage.
  5. Survey of 3,017 high school and college students and 3,234 parents of younger students that shows “nearly all” students who used both human tutors and ChatGPT have replaced some of their tutoring sessions with ChatGPT. Of those, 95% reported an improvement in grades as a result, and 9 in 10 prefer studying with ChatGPT over a human tutor. Most common subjects that this is used for are math and science.

Papers & Research

  1. Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts
  2. GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers
  3. GenAI in Higher Education (Added 10/31/2023)
  4. In the age of ChatGPT, what’s it like to be accused of cheating? (Added 10/31/2023)
  5. Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts (Added 10/31/2023)

AI-Text-Generation Tools to Try

  1. ChatGPT – (Updated 2/17/2025)
    • ChatGPT is the industry standard. Has the most prominent “reasoning” models, which take time to “think” in order to return better answers.
    • Free version available after account creation with email and password.
    • ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) offers an enhanced model.
      • Note: Don’t base assumptions about ChatGPT Plus on the free version.
    • ChatGPT Pro ($200/month) offers most intelligent models and Deep Research report-writing tool.
    • Has capability to upload and analyze various document types, including typed PDFs (not scans).
    • Voice chat feature added to the platform. Can translate spoken language in nearly real-time.
    • Phone app with excellent vocal transcription is available for Android and Apple.
    • Has released an “agent” tool, Operator, which can take computer-based actions on the user’s behalf (only available in paid tiers currently).
    • DALL-E is included, which allows for advanced image recognition and creation.
  2. Google Gemini  – (Updated 2/17/2025)
    • Nearly unlimited “token context” (memory for chat or document length).
    • Can be plugged in to Google Docs tools.
    • Features image recognition and creation tools.
  3. Claude 3.5 – (Updated 2/17/2025)
    • Available for free to the general public. Pay for more usage.
    • Key upgrades:
      • Ability to upload up text documents. Can read scanned PDFs.
      • Can test generated code in a “canvas” window within the chat.
      • “Memory” of nearly 70,000-word context enables extended conversational threads and improved analysis of longer texts.
      • Highly regarded for writing.
    • More pleasant user interaction compared to ChatGPT.
      • Note: Increased “agreeableness” may lead to more inaccuracies.
  4. Deepseek R1 – (Updated 2/17/2025)
    • Top Chinese reasoning chatbot. Entirely free to use.
    • Can upload text files.
    • Considered at or near the top writing performance.
    • Many privacy and security concerns surrounding the phone app in particular, but model as a whole as well. Has “worst safety testing scores of any model ever” (Dario Amodei).
  5. NotebookLM – (Updated 2/17/2025)
    • An AI-powered environment that allows you to upload digital texts and “converse” with them.
    • Ask questions about a broad spectrum of specific sources you want to engage with.
    • Generate a broad, engaging AI “podcast” where two AI “hosts” discuss the sources you’ve uploaded.
    • A good way to quickly get up to speed on a variety of specific, dense sources before diving in more manually or deeply.
  6. Perplexity.AI – (Updated 2/17/2025) Designed to be a citation search engine, this AI will provide quick Wikipedia-like explanations of topics, as well as list links to reputable sources on that topic. It is fairly reliable (finds real sources), but not entirely useful (doesn’t provide access for all sources, not always relevant) for finding peer-reviewed sources on a particular topic. When ChatGPT’s Deep Research becomes more broadly available, its utility will be questionable.

Other AI Tools to Try

  1. Gamma.app – A free AI tool to turn a lesson plan (or even just a small prompt) automatically into a nearly finished PowerPoint presentation. Here’s a video showing how it works. 
  2. Guidde / Scribe – (Updated 2/17/2025) Paid tools to quickly create explanation videos, GIFs, or PDFs explaining a process. Helpful for creating documentation about how software or websites work for students.
  3. Midjourney – Midjourney is considered the best image generation tool available, but it has no free options.
  4. Suno – (Updated 2/17/2025)