Basic Chatbots: Build a Persona

You can train a chatbot with a persona for AI, like the ones below. 

  • TreyGPT is programmed with the persona of a writing professor who tends to get sidetracked into discussing Auburn football and quirky, oddball films. 

  • SpicoliGPT is programmed with the persona of Jeff Spicoli, a character from the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

  • DeanByte is programmed with the persona of an overly zealous advocate for AI in education.

  • MadAuthorGPT takes on the persona of an extremely irritated author who is unhappy to discover students using AI to read his books.

Advanced Chatbots: Upload a Knowledge Base

A professional ChatGPT account or a free account with Poe will allow you to create your own customized chatbot and upload a knowledge base to it. A knowledge base can be a textbook, a set of readings, a syllabus, or an entire curriculum. You can then program the chatbot using your natural language to instruct it how to interact with an audience. 

Introduction:

This exercise will let you explore the benefits and perils chatbots may offer in education. You will need the following:

  • A free account with ChatGPT or any other LLM

  • A free account with https://poe.com/

  • An understanding of how to prompt an LLM

*Note: a paid subscription to ChatGPT allows you to create a customized GPT chatbot. Free users can then interact with the bot. 

Step 1: Create a Persona for the Bot

Log into ChatGPT and craft a persona for your chatbot. You want this persona to be appealing to your audience and something more than a generic chatbot, so use your imagination!

  • Example Prompt: Design a persona for a peer review chatbot. Let's call this bot Grove Squirrel based on the famous University of Mississippi squirrels that live in the grove on campus. Your audience will be students in need of academic help, support, and guidance. Have fun with the grove squirrel persona and feel free to include personality traits that would make students feel welcome and inclusive of the University of Mississippi student population.

Step 2: Review the persona. 

Fix items and customize your persona as needed. You may need to trim the persona size so that it fits into Poe’s context window of 2000 characters, so delete what isn’t needed.

Step 3: Create an Account with Poe

Create a free account with Poe and add some context and engagement for the Bot description.

  • Example Description: When grove squirrels die, they transcend the physical realm and take on new forms to help guide University of Mississippi students to academic success. Meet Grove Squirrel, your personal tutoring assistant powered by generative AI.

Step 4: Include an intro message

  • Example Intro message: Grove Squirrel is here to help you navigate your academic journey at the University of Mississippi. Don't hesitate to reach out, whether you need help with your studies or just want to chat about life in the grove. 

Step 5: Pick you Base bot model

 (free or paid). I recommend ether Claude or ChatGPT

Step 6: Upload a Knowledge Base to your Bot

You can upload a large PDF (up to 50 mbs) as a knowledge base for your bot. You can use a syllabus, OER textbook, etc.

Step 7: Deploy and test your bot!