Entering our agentic era and a blueprint for economic growth

January 13-17, 2025

ChatGPT for Education explores how AI can help you teach and learn more effectively. Each Friday, the OpenAI team shares relevant news in AI and education. Subscribe to receive news like this and profiles from innovators in education in your email inbox.

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What’s new from OpenAI

Tasks

We rolled out a beta version of tasks — a new way to ask ChatGPT to do things for you at a future time, such as send you a weekly global news briefing, get a daily personalized 15-minute workout, or set a reminder for the future.

Read more about tasks and how it marks the beginning of our “agentic era”:

• OpenAI’s agentic era begins: ChatGPT Tasks offers job scheduling, reminders and more — VentureBeat

• OpenAI adds agentic AI tasks to ChatGPT. Here's what it can do for you — Mashable

Custom Instructions update

We also updated custom instructions to make it easier to customize how ChatGPT responds to you. With the new UI, you can tell ChatGPT the traits you want it to have, how you want it to talk to you, and any rules you want it to follow. And don’t worry — if you're already using custom instructions, this won't change your current settings.

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What we’re reading this week

OpenAI’s Economic Blueprint for how the US can maximize AI’s benefits — OpenAI

This week, OpenAI published its Economic Blueprint, outlining strategies to extend America’s leadership in AI innovation and foster economic growth that benefits all. For educators, that means “scaling AI literacy across all education levels through robust funding for pilot programs, increasing school district technology budgets, and providing professional development for teachers.”

Schools Must Innovate Now — Forbes

Dan Fitzpatrick, author on AI & the future of education, weighs in on the new Economic Blueprint. “OpenAI’s Economic Blueprint paints a bold picture of education’s role in America’s AI future. By harnessing the power of AI to personalize learning, upskill workers and democratize research, the company envisions a society where innovation is accessible and impactful.”

Stanford’s new principles for use of AI — Stanford

Balancing AI innovation and the university’s values, Stanford published new recommendations for AI use in the university’s admin, education, and research departments. The main focus is on “augmenting human capabilities” versus “replacing humans.”

Philadelphia school district launches new initiatives to integrate AI into all classrooms — The Daily Pennsylvanian

The program takes on a three-tier structure, educating district administrators, school leaders, and educators. It provides district administrators with strategic AI integration, supports school leaders in AI-driven instruction, and equips educators with hands-on training to personalize learning and track student progress.

How educators are using OpenAI’s Projects feature — ChatGPT for Education

In case you missed it, we introduced Projects — a new way to organize and customize your chats. Let’s see how two educators are using Projects to improve their workflows.

Jeremy Caplan

and Helen Crompton share how they are using it in the classroom.

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What about you?

What new insights did you gather in practice, or from your reading and listening, this week? Let us know in the comments!