ChatGPT as Your Personal Tutor

One key to success as a knowledge worker is the consistent acquisition of knowledge itself. Indeed, I find this to be the most pleasurable aspect of being a knowledge worker - the opportunity to get paid to learn.

However, it's not uncommon to embark on a course of study only to hit a roadblock in your understanding of the topic. Suddenly, you realize you lack some foundational knowledge needed to progress.

A few examples include:

• A startup founder developing a machine vision model who realizes she needs to pause and learn the fundamentals of Python to advance the model.
• A leader working with a new data science team at an enterprise software company who needs to quickly grasp key statistics concepts.
• A Customer Success Managers (CSM) assigned a client in a new industry who need to familiarize themselves with the terminology, business outcomes, key people, and events to have meaningful conversations.

So, what do you do in such situations?

This is often the pivotal point in the learning journey. It can be challenging to identify precisely what you need to learn and find resources tailored to your existing knowledge and learning style.

This is where ChatGPT shines.

Over the past few weeks, I have relied on ChatGPT (Model GPT-4) as my personal tutor in a wide array of topics: The basics of machine learning, diagnosing and fixing a leaking toilet (don’t ask ??), the best ways to manage my calendar, the essentials of sautéing vegetables, and even how to develop a generative AI chatbot for customer support.

In each case, the experience has been genuinely remarkable. For many of us, interacting with ChatGPT represents our first meaningful conversation with a piece of silicon, and it performs admirably, personalizing its advice and crafting a custom learning path - a syllabus - just for you.

Try this yourself. Here are a few tips to get started:

• Assign a persona to ChatGPT. Explicitly tell it who it should be, like “you are a plumber helping diagnose a leaking toilet”, or “you are a senior machine learning engineer at a fast-growing SaaS startup.” Be as specific as possible and provide as much context as possible in your initial prompts.
• Share your learning style. A popular technique is to ask it to explain something as if you were a five-year-old. If you don't understand its response, ask for clarification. If you do, ask it to explain as if you were a “smart high schooler”. By progressively affirming your level of background knowledge and assigning yourself a persona, ChatGPT can better tailor its responses to your level.
• Request a lesson plan. This is useful for understanding the breadth of what you will be learning and anchoring the conversation. Sometimes, ChatGPT may skip a few topics. You can remind it to refer back to the original outline to get back on track.
• Use quizzes to check your understanding. After each topic, have ChatGPT quiz you with comprehension questions. ChatGPT reviews your answers and provides nuanced and helpful feedback.
• Ask for examples. If you're struggling with a topic, ask for an example related to something you care about. ChatGPT can then use that example to explain future concepts, which can make the learning process more engaging.
• Supplement your learning with other sources. While ChatGPT is an excellent tool, it can miss details or subtleties, occasionally "hallucinate" answers, and it does not provide visual aids such as images, charts, or videos. However, it can point you to other learning resources. The new web Browsing GPT-4 model (in beta) may be a good option for this.
• Have fun! ChatGPT’s ability to help you overcome learning hurdles and continue your lifelong learning journey is truly empowering. It's a skill that all knowledge workers should add to their toolkit - plus, it's simply fun.

So, how do you learn with ChatGPT? I'm eager to hear your experiences and learn from you. Please share your tips in the comments below.

Article written by Cass Sapir and edited by ChatGPT (Model 4).