“You kind of flip the relationship of a chatbot tutor, where the chatbot is not aiming to teach the student, but the chatbot is aiming to extract some teachings from the student. The chatbot might say, help me understand how to solve a linear equation. And the student might say, oh, well, I kind of know what you should do is maybe subtract things from both sides. And the chatbot's like, ah, but why do you have to do that?”
How I AI · AI Builders · November 2026
Context
Scott is a math teacher. Claire asked for an example of keeping student agency when kids use AI. He describes a 'flipped' tutor that draws out what the student already knows instead of handing over answers.
Transcript
…the answer or is too helpful or kind of maybe even doesn't appreciate the ideas that the student is giving. So I'm really, I really like some of the products I see out there that are interpreting what the students say and running with that. It's like, oh, good idea, kid. Tell me more about that.
…And from a AI education perspective, you like, you know, solutions where it can support interpretation of what a student is doing, but not take away that agency of like, I am learning how to solve this problem. I am learning how to, how to do the work. Can you show me an example of what you mean?
Yeah, I think like I've seen some projects. I've kind of noodled on projects myself where you kind of flip the relationship of a chatbot tutor where the tutor is now that the chatbot is not aiming to teach the student, but the chatbot is aiming to extract some teachings from the student. And so the chatbot might say, help me understand how to solve a linear equation. And the student might say like, oh, well, I kind of know what you should do is maybe subtract things from both sides. And the chatbot's like, ah, but why do you have to do that? And, you know, can the chatbot be positioned so that they are not annoying, but they can still grab the ideas that the student has. And the students have a lot of great knowledge in their heads, but sometimes they're afraid to share it out with humans and share it out with AI. So I think it's going to be powerful if we can enable kids to share their thoughts.
Today is, this is my second episode I've recorded today. And the earlier one was also about a language tutoring episode. So it might already be live. But what we were talking about in that one is AI is this like infinitely patient private tutor you can say all your dumbest stuff to. And so it's…
Yeah, I think actually the zone of frustration or zone of proximal development, I think, like, you know, can the tutor, I like you also mentioned infinite patience. And I think that's something that is interesting to play with in the chatbot realm of like, should it be infinitely patient or should…
I need to give you some. You can do it. Why don't you give it a try? Yeah,
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