How to Grade the Top AI Tools for Students
Teacher's Take: "AI Study Tool Surge": Do They Support Deep Learning or Just Provide Answers?
This weekend I was reading a lot of Op-Eds about ChatGPT’s 2 year anniversary that just passed on November 30th. Meanwhile a well-liked and important researcher at OpenAI left the startup and explained why on Substack.
Elon Musk was also in the Thanksgiving spirit, Elon is asking a federal court to stop OpenAI from converting into a fully, for-profit business, even as Canadian media outlets sue OpenAI.
OpenAI has in the area of 250 million weekly users on ChatGPT. Two years ago, on Nov. 30 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT and the hype frenzy around Generative AI has been entertaining at least. ChatGPT has probably changed your life the most if you are a high school or college student, and there are a lot of nifty AI tools and homework aids for Students.
“ChatGPT has probably changed your life the most if you are a high school or college student, if you work in customer service or software development, or if you're trying to become a prolific poster on LinkedIn. - Ina Fried, re Axios. “
A lot of Gen AI adoption is a bit like crypto, most are mostly male, and young, as in students. That’s why we see such a specular surge in new subscriptions for ChatGPT during the back to school season.
In 2024, nearly 35% of all venture capital-funded startups have been AI-related. Given how few winners there actually are, I’m not sure that’s even a good thing for American innovation. If you aren’t a student or some sort of LinkedIn AI tool maker who created one of those tools to game LinkedIn influencers, it’s entirely possible Generative AI is not even on your radar much.
Anthropic, xAI, CoreWeave, Scale AI, OpenAI, and Xaira Therapeutics have all raised rounds of over $1 Billion in 2025 in AI, some of them a lot more. Scaling laws aren’t just slowing, the winners are operating like they are in winner-take-all industries even as BigTech is racing to increase capex for 2024 that will significantly eclipse 2023 levels.
ChatGPT was one of the fastest growing Apps in History
For OpenAI, so much of their revenue is tied to paid subscriptions of ChatGPT from students globally and GenZ and Alpha generations in particular. ChatGPT even disrupted an EdTech company. GenZ and Alpha also leverage Generative AI as early adopters in writing and coding, in homework and at work better and more than the rest of us. They are also more worried about its impacts on the future of work and their careers.
If ChatGPT was the iPhone moment for Generative AI, Nvidia has been the revenue driver soaring on demand from BigTech and American Cloud leaders. But in society are we priming young male students to see AI differently than the rest of the population? Something weird is going on.
Image credit: Bloomberg. Women and men appear to see Generative AI very differently.
Students are using AI Tools a Great Deal
Every month adoption of AI tools, not just ChatGPT necessarily, is increasing among student populations globally:
While LLMs may be subject to the law of diminishing returns — where each added unit of input yields progressively smaller gains. As LLMs grow larger, the costs of getting high-quality training data and scaling infrastructure increase exponentially, reducing the returns on performance improvement in new models. In truth, young students growing up on ChatGPT today, might be totally different workers in a few years. I think we have to respect be cognisant that it won’t all be good.
I asked
for a guide on some of the top tools in AI for students and to rate or grade them. Few people are as qualified as he is at actually doing this. He’s the founder of Educating AI Newsletter. Scroll down if you want to read that right away.OpenAI, which is now valued at $157 billion is going to lose a lot of money in 2025, and it’s going to be a real test of its staying power. In 2024, their rival and splinter startup Anthropic more or less is growing faster in the crucial Enterprise AI segment than they are according to a report by Menlo Ventures.
While Generative AI is supposed to be adding value or even mythical productivity to many industries, if that’s the case why are most of ChatGPTs users just young men who happen to be students?
Major Generative AI Impact on Industries - Vertical Apps
Healthcare
Legal
Financial Services
Media & Entertainment
Science & Research
Education? (is this stuff good enough for Education)
If junior developers have seen their job prospects materially impacted by ChatGPT and Claude, what gives? While Enterprise AI will take years to play out for Generative AI, the verdict on who the users of frontier models are is clear.
So let’s talk about some of the other AI and homework related tools students are using not named ChatGPT. I think we can learn a lot from students and young people who are usually the earliest adopters of new technologies.
Brief list of AI Tools for Students, Homework, Writing and Research
Gauth by ByteDance
StudyFetch, among many others mentioned in the graded guide.
✨ What is Gauth
Gauth is one of the trending Ed-Tech related apps by the same company as the maker of TikTok. Read more about it in the report by a16z on trending consumer AI apps.
Gauth, originally launched as Gauthmath in 2021, is an AI-powered study companion designed to assist students with their homework across various subjects. Initially focused on mathematics, the app has expanded its capabilities to include subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, and more.
I actually expect Chinese makers to dominate the intersection of Generative AI and education apps in 2025 and the years to come.
🏆 The Best Writing Tool for Paraphrasing: Quillbot
Quillbot is one of the most underrated and unknown AI tools out there for writing. It’s actually super popular, it’s just not talked about or mentioned much.
QuillBot is an AI-powered writing tool designed to assist users in enhancing their writing quality through various features. It primarily functions as a paraphrasing tool, allowing users to input text and receive suggestions for rephrasing while maintaining the original meaning. This capability is particularly beneficial for students, writers, and professionals looking to improve clarity and fluency in their writing.
I mentioning these two, because I don’t think our guide goes too much into detail about them.
✨ Holiday Discount Deal 🥂
During the month of December, I’m giving away annual subscriptions at a discounted rate. Check out the offer:
Get 35% off for a 1-year discount deal if you use this code in the month of 🎄December. ❄️ Or use the code to give a Gift to someone who is a fellow AI Enthusiast.
Nick’s Deep Dives
Beyond Efficiency: How AI is Unleashing Generative Thinking in Education
The AI Teaching Revolution? Speculation vs. Evidence
The Search Evolution: Balancing Inquiry and Generation in AI
Is the "AI Fever" Really Breaking?
Check out our viral guide on NotebookLM.
What’s Below 👀
In this article, Nick goes through various AI tools related to homework, student workflows and research giving them a grade and explains a bit about what they are good for and their limitations.
AI Study Tool Surge: Do They Support Deep Learning or Just Provide Answers?
By
(Nick Potkalitsky), November, 2024.The Challenge
The AI study tool gold rush is on. Every week brings new apps promising to transform how students learn. [article continues after premium page break].
Editor’s Note: go premium to unlock the full article or wait until it’s published to all free readers sometime later in December.
A byline by AI Education, Nick is one of a new wave of Educators helping us understand AI better in the classroom and is one of the more philosophical writers about AI at the intersection of education I know as well being one of our most prolific guest authors on this publication:
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