Summary of Key Points
This year, during the college entrance examination season, major companies such as Tencent, Alibaba (Kwak), Baidu, and ByteDance have all upgraded their AI tools for the exam, covering the entire process from preparation, taking the exam, to filling out college applications. These tools assist students by organizing mistakes, identifying key test points before the exam, ensuring fairness during the exam by restricting photo-taking, providing psychological support, and generating lists of recommended colleges after the exam. While these tools are effective in organizing information and improving efficiency, they also have limitations, such as data errors, repetitive recommendations, logical misconceptions, and a lack of transparency in their algorithms. Essentially, they are supplementary tools and should not be relied on entirely.
1. Why are big companies so eager to develop AI for the college entrance examination?
The college entrance examination represents a “super traffic gateway” and an opportunity to build trust. With millions of students and parents participating each year, these platforms have access to a high-value, frequent user base. Whoever can help them with this important decision can gain their long-term trust, which could lead to additional AI services in areas such as further education, job hunting, and financial management. Additionally, the data collected from the exam (such as preferences for college applications and learning weaknesses) is excellent material for training large-scale AI models. Therefore, while it may seem like a competition of AI tools, the real battle is for control over users, data, and the overall AI ecosystem.
2. In what ways are AI tools for the college entrance examination truly useful?
AI excels at tasks involving information organization, which can save time and reduce anxiety for students:
- Improving preparation efficiency: For example, AI can help organize mistakes in classical Chinese texts (by sending them to the AI, which then provides similar questions and explanation methods), summarize templates for political science essay questions, and revise English essays (not only correcting grammar but also improving logic and expression).
- Post-exam psychological support: When a student feels overwhelmed after a physics exam, AI can offer reassurance, suggesting that focusing on the next subject is more important, acting as a calm observer to help them adjust their mindset quickly.
- College application information integration: By entering scores and chosen subjects, AI can quickly generate lists of recommended colleges, saving the hassle of manually checking hundreds of schools’ admission requirements.
3. What pitfalls should be avoided with AI tools?
AI often struggles when it comes to making precise decisions or requiring deep understanding:
- Data errors: Lin Zihan experienced a situation where the recommended colleges were hundreds of places behind the official rankings, nearly causing her to miss out on her desired school.
- Repeated recommendations: AI may overly rely on score matching, leading to similar recommendations for students with similar scores, which can result in overcrowding in popular majors and lower admission chances.
- Out-of-syllabus problems: Some students have used AI to solve math problems, only for the AI to apply advanced calculus methods beyond high school syllabus requirements, rendering the effort futile.
- Mismatched recommendations: Even if a student chooses subjects like physics, chemistry, and politics, the AI might still repeatedly suggest related majors that do not match their interests or academic background.
4. Why can’t we rely entirely on AI? What are the core limitations?
There are three major issues that are difficult to resolve in the short term:
- Logical misconceptions: AI generates content based on probabilities, so even if the reasoning is incorrect, the answer might still be correct. This can lead students down the wrong path if they follow the AI’s advice.
- Lack of transparency: The underlying logic behind college application recommendations is unclear—what historical data is used? How is the data cleaned? Are the algorithms influenced by commercial partnerships? Different platforms may provide vastly different recommendations, but users have no way to understand why.
- Inability to correct errors: AI can only identify the knowledge points associated with mistakes but cannot determine the reason for them (whether due to carelessness or lack of understanding). The advice it provides is generally to “strengthen relevant knowledge,” without offering targeted learning guidance.
5. How should students use AI effectively?
Consider AI as a supplementary tool, not a decision-making partner:
- Use AI for efficiency: Let AI help with organizing mistakes, identifying key test points, and revising essays.
- Verify critical information: Always check the latest admission scores and rankings on official websites (e.g., provincial examination boards) when using AI to generate college recommendations.
- Consider personal circumstances: When choosing colleges and majors, take into account your interests, chosen subjects, and future career plans. Don’t let “popular” options sway your decisions.
- Use psychological support: AI can provide calm advice after the exam, but ultimately, you must make your own choices.
In summary, AI tools for the college entrance examination are a useful aid, but the final decision about your future should be made by you. After all, your destiny cannot be determined by an algorithm.