Learning isn't just for our student years—it should be a lifelong habit.
But I've noticed that many friends share the same struggles when trying to learn: they want to study but can't settle down, keep wanting to scroll on their phones, and feel anxious when they're not studying. They can't resist saving curated study materials from experts, yet never open them again.
It's really not that you're not trying hard enough. What you might be missing is a clear learning goal and timely positive feedback.
Google conducted a controlled experiment showing that students using AI assistance improved their grades by an average of 9% and their long-term memory retention by 11%. The advantages of AI-assisted education are clear.
I've found that some domestic companies started laying out AI education long ago.
Yesterday, the Zhipu Qingyan official website quietly opened beta testing for the "Study Buddy" feature.
K-jie applied to try it out right away. Using AI to help understand knowledge points is super simple—no matter how difficult the knowledge point, you don't have to worry about not being able to "crack" it, and you'll really become more and more motivated to learn.
01. Master Knowledge Points in 3 Steps with AI
Open the Zhipu Qingyan official website or desktop client and open the Study Buddy feature.
It's still in beta testing. Friends can try it out with my invite code:CURDCAak
Official Website：https://chatglm.cn/main/gdetail/68f0b8c110eea3e78b0e0e5e
Create a Study Project
We can directly upload all kinds of study materials we normally use—e-books, PPTs, PDFs, and more. Zhipu's Study Buddy will help us fully master all the knowledge points!
Each project supports up to 10 files, with each file up to 500M.
For university textbooks like Advanced Mathematics, Quantum Mechanics, Introduction to Sociology, and Jurisprudence, a single book is usually only a few dozen MB. Not to mention various PPT courseware and PDF materials—they fit in with plenty of room to spare.
For example, I recently wanted to learn data analysis. There are some high-quality PPT courseware online, but I have absolutely zero foundation—when I see technical terms like Gaussian Mixture and Bayesian Classifier, I get dizzy, and learning is very difficult.
Let's try uploading these materials to Study Buddy.
Study Buddy will create a study project for us, comprehensively analyze these materials, and generate a systematic knowledge system.
N Paths to Learning
Study Buddy will help us organize the content framework and generate a four-level mind map consisting of the project title, specific chapters, core chapter content, and specific knowledge points, letting us understand the knowledge structure of the entire project.
For each knowledge point, Study Buddy will generate a knowledge card on the right side of the screen.
Every knowledge point can be traced back to the original material for reference. We can verify it against the original text at any time.
Study Buddy will first briefly summarize the content of the knowledge point. The most impressive part is the AI explanation below—to help me better understand the content, Study Buddy generates demonstration projects in real time.
For example, for learning about classification, Study Buddy will create a visualization demo of a classification model. We can randomly add samples on the page, adjust the decision boundary, and observe the changes.
It's much more intuitive than the explanations in the original PPT.
Study Buddy will also generate a set of data in real time to demonstrate the entire data preprocessing process for me: raw data collection—data cleaning—correlation analysis—data transformation.
If I don't understand it after one pass, I can just refresh and reset. Study Buddy refreshes a new data case in one second and demonstrates again, until I understand it.
Generate knowledge flashcards with one click, presenting all the content of this section in image form~ to help with memory.
What is used here should be GLM-Image, which Zhipu just launched a few days ago. Its text rendering accuracy is very high, and the image information is intuitive and accurate.
Throughout the learning process, if there is anything you do not understand, you can ask the study buddy in the lower right corner, and the study buddy will provide detailed answers.
In-class quiz
After learning each knowledge point, the study buddy arranges some single-choice/multiple-choice in-class quizzes for us to test how well we have mastered the knowledge.
After passing the quiz, the study buddy will help us record mastery of the knowledge point +1, making it easy for us to always understand our current learning progress.
02. Shared learning projects
What if you want to learn something, but do not have a specific idea and do not know how to find materials?
The study buddy homepage offers many public learning projects: hardcore skills, expert perspectives, practical life, hobbies and interests, AI ecosystem, quick material overviews...
Any project we are interested in can be joined for learning with one click, such as Big S's beauty secrets.
Xiaomi CEO Lei's marketing approach.
After completing a learning project marked with a cooperative course label, you can obtain course certification~
We can also "open-source" our own learning projects and share them with friends to learn together.
03. Some sharing
The more I use it, the more I find that the real delight of AI-assisted learning lies in greatly reducing the pain of learning: condensing lengthy content into key points, converting boring text into intuitive project demonstrations, and translating foreign-language materials into Chinese explanations. Every small use case brings an improvement in learning efficiency.
The most important change is not how to learn more efficiently, but that each of us has the ability to learn more complex, more abstract, and more challenging knowledge。
For example, in the past, if we wanted to learn data analysis, we first had to learn statistics, SQL, and other content, and the time cost of learning was very high. Now we can try directly sending data analysis learning materials to the study buddy~
The same applies to learning AI from zero foundation. We can start with materials we are interested in, and with AI assistance, fill in underlying knowledge such as neural networks as needed.
A very good innovation of the Zhipu study buddy is that it makes learning projects public. If some interactive mechanisms are added later, it will become even more addictive, such as gamified learning leaderboards and speedrun rankings for popular learning projects. Checking in every day to maintain the rhythm can also unlock titles, making learning part of social interaction.
In the future, paid knowledge may mean joining a learning project, using reusable learning paths and practice systems to learn together and iterate together, constantly improving the learning project.
Original link:Understand a new field in 3 minutes, the AI study buddy took me flying