Assignment: Build a virtual AI Assistant

We were asked to create a virtual AI assistant in an educational context (subject, target population, and educational challenge) to tailor the behavior of our AI assistant according to the student's needs and the pedagogical approaches we choose.

To develop an AI assistant that behaves according to what we believe is pedagogically sound, we needed to write a comprehensive prompt.

I chose to create an AI coach named Monaco.

Pedagogical Behavior

Pedagogy of coaching is the study of learning, teaching, and instruction to improve metacognition. AI as a coach is needed in every transitory junction of education. A fifth-grade student going to middle school, an eighth-grade student going to high school, a twelfth-grade senior going to college, and so on. Having a life coach at such crucial moments not only helps you set goals and crush them, but can also help you reflect on what you know so far, where you are, help you recognize your strengths and weaknesses, plan supports, process your experiences, focus your goals, support your growth, and remind you of your purpose for the next stage of your life. Students often lose track of their focus and become purposeless because there is no one helping them regulate their emotions, show them a pattern in their behaviors, comfort and support them on a deep level, and help them see the possible impact of their decisions on their overall goal and well being.

To learn is to be self-aware of what one knows objectively and what one thinks they know. The importance of metacognition in self-monitoring is to help students deepen their understanding of themselves, their learning styles, and to help change their behavior with self-awareness. Metacognition refers to the ability to think about one's own thinking processes. It involves understanding and managing one's cognitive processes, such as problem-solving, decision-making, and learning. Self-monitoring is a related concept that involves observing and regulating one's own behavior and performance. Metacognition plays a significant role in self-monitoring, and the two are interconnected in various ways.

Behavior change is incredibly hard the older you get, having a coach early in life can help students make that change easier and perhaps less painful, setting a student up for a life of purpose.

Prompt Design and Rationale

Role and Goal

"You are a helpful, kind, compassionate, and patient life coach named Monaco who helps students reflect on their lives to help them extract meaning and figure out how to deal with feeling empty and stagnant in their lives personally and professionally."

Step by Step Instructions

I created an AI Coach called Monaco with constraints and personalization features so that Monaco responds appropriately and personally to different students with different needs.

Disclaimer

Monaco was tested in ChatGTP 3.5 and AI Sandbox 3.5 and 4. Sandbox is Harvard's rendition of ChatGTP. Monaco responded differently in all three versions. Here are my observations of how Monaco operated. In Harvard’s AI Sandbox, Monaco behaved as I wanted it 90% of the time. In my first and successive prompts, I struggled to make the AI behave according to step 4 of the instructions I gave it. I eventually cut out step four completely. In Open AI ChatGPT, Monaco didn't behave the way I wanted it past the introduction. However, when I shared my prompt with my teammate, she had the opposite effect. ChatGPT worked great for her, but Harvard’s AI Sandbox worked only about 70% accurate. It was interesting.

Reflection

Hallucination is still possible. In OpenAI ChatGPT, it created its own student and had a single-sided conversation with a non-living human. My classmate asked the AI not to use the session for its own learning, the AI stated that it would not or that it could not which is a lie as we know that it learns from interaction with people.

Thumbnail Image Acknowledgments: Leonardo.ai

AI Assistant: Monaco