Using AI to Study
I am currently a senior in college, and initially, I was very hesitant to start using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help me with my schoolwork. When I first learned about AI’s impressive capabilities, I thought that if I started using AI to help with my schoolwork, I would become lazy and just let AI do everything for me. Sadly, this has happened to many students worldwide because they use AI incorrectly, effectively letting it think for them, and then take the credit for work that isn’t theirs.
Another reason why I was very skeptical about using AI was that it sometimes provides false information. While writing this article, I asked ChatGPT a pretty niche question about roller coasters, a subject I know a lot about, to see if it gave the right answer. I was shocked with how wrong its answer was. Pictured below is the correspondence I had with ChatGPT about the first roller coaster that Intamin, a prominent roller coaster manufacturer, ever built.
What was surprising to me was that there just weren’t a few little details that were wrong with its answer. There was never even a roller coaster named “Gulf Coaster” or “Jumbo Jet” at Six Flags AstroWorld [1]! It completely made it up! When I asked it to cite its source, it gave me this response:
ChatGPT even acknowledged its own shortcomings! I share this experience not to say that you should never use AI, but instead to illustrate that every user should know about the limitations of AI. Most AI software is a prediction model that scrapes the internet and produces the most likely response to each prompt it is given based on what it found on the internet, and not necessarily the most correct response [2]. This means that AI is not the ultimate source of truth in the universe, but it can regurgitate the internet [3].
Even though ChatGPT sometimes cites false information, I shouldn’t have let my fear of using it incorrectly stop me from taking advantage of this incredibly powerful resource we have at our fingertips. Because when used correctly, AI can ethically aid critical thinking instead of hindering it. Now that I better understand how AI works and its limitations, I’ve been able to use it to design higher quality and more time effective study sessions compared to when I completely avoided AI. Here are a few ways I have used AI to study more effectively, and I recommend trying these out and seeing what works best for you.
Brainstorming
While brainstorming, more ideas are always better. Whether you are brainstorming topics for papers or ideas for a prototype, AI can give you as many ideas as desired to help your creative process. Not every idea may be feasible or even good, but each idea produced in a brainstorming session is useful in converging on the best one.
Creating Essay Outlines
Once a topic for a paper is selected after the brainstorming process, it can be difficult to put ideas onto paper. Thankfully, AI is extremely good at writing outlines for papers and providing infrastructure to help frame existing ideas. However, something important to keep in mind is that the better the prompt is, the better the given result is. The more details and guidance that the software receives, the more suited to your purposes the outline will be. To illustrate this point, I’ll show the difference between a vague prompt and a specific one. Pictured below is a vague prompt which gives a lot of ideas, followed by a specific prompt that gives more focused ideas.
Vague Prompt
Specific Prompt
As you can see, the specific prompt is much more useful and catered towards the user’s needs.
Summarizing Information
When reading lengthy articles with lots of scientific jargon, it can be hard to stay focused. I have found that AI is very good at summarizing information that is pasted into the prompt space, which can save a lot of time and help streamline the learning process.
Editing Papers
Normal spellchecking features that are built into word processors like Word and Google Docs are helpful with finding spelling and grammar errors, but they aren’t made to give feedback. AI can analyze sentence structure and the flow of ideas within your paper to give valuable feedback based on the type of paper you are writing.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the key to using AI effectively while studying is to have it help you think and not have it think for you. AI should not produce the final product of learning, but it can be used as a springboard for higher academic achievement when used properly. Understanding every resource available is crucial to good design, so I hope a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of AI will help you to design better study routines.
References
[1] "Candy Cane Coaster." Roller Coaster DataBase, RCDB, rcdb.com/4537.htm. Accessed 22 Sept. 2025.
[2] Moyer, Phil. "The Prompt: Probability, Data, and the Gen AI Mindset." Google Cloud Blog, 25 Oct. 2023, cloud.google.com/transform/prompt-probability-data-and-the-gen-ai-mindset.
[3] Marwala, Tshilidzi. "Never Assume That the Accuracy of Artificial Intelligence Information Equals the Truth." United Nations University, 18 July 2024, unu.edu/article/never-assume-accuracy-artificial-intelligence-information-equals-truth.
To cite this article:
Ipsen, Blake. “Using AI to Study.” The BYU Design Review, 22 September 2025, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/writing-professional-articles-developing-your-writing.
