Prometheus: From Generic Chatbots to Frugal, Ethical and Socratic AI for Education

PROMETHEUS AI-Powered Personalized Learning Assistants

Allan Malheiro, Sciences Po Bordeaux / Assas / Paris-Saclay Ninon Baudin, Sciences Po Bordeaux Gaelle Mechin, Sciences Po Bordeaux Bader Daraa, Sciences Po Bordeaux Alexis Cambriel, Sciences Po Bordeaux

Training / education / pedagogy

According to the Bordeaux Citizen Convention on AI, more than 90% of Sciences Po Bordeaux students use AI at least once a month. Yet paradoxically, despite the potential of AI models to increase productivity, many report losing in efficiency and critical thinking. Prometheus AI (https://prometheus-scpobx.fr/ia/chat) is our response to this paradox: already used by more than 150 Sciences Po Bordeaux students, it is a free, non-commercial and frugal AI platform tailored for education and reflection. For students, Prometheus AI offers several interaction models so that students can progressively shift from generic commercial AI to more ethical alternatives without being destabilized. Beyond model choice, it provides several interaction modes tailored to academic work: Socratic reasoning, scientific research, Sciences Po argumentation methodology, and deep research. Students can also use it to generate flashcards and quizzes directly from their courses. For teachers, Prometheus AI is a tool to organize their work, create AI agents trained on their own course materials, and deploy digital classroom environments where students can interact with a course-specific AI.

Higher education needs education-curated AI platforms instead of generic chatbots for several reasons. First and foremost, as mentioned, the goal of Prometheus AI is to allow students to think critically and be creative. This reflection also involves tackling contemporary problems. For that reason, Prometheus AI is a frugal AI embedded into sustainable development with: - an economic role: prepare students for the intelligent use of AI (essential in a job market increasingly affected by AI) - a social role: tackle inequalities between the students who pay for premium AI models and the rest of the students (Prometheus AI offers top AI models for free) - an ecological role: Prometheus AI sensitizes students to the water use of AI by displaying the water consumption and reducing the water use of its models Finally, Prometheus AI represents an alternative to traditional AI models: in addition to being non-profit, it represents a "black box" preventing AI models from training on their data, allowing digital privacy for students.

Our ultimate goal is simple: we aim to reduce education inequalities in French universities while promoting a frugal, confidential and non-profit AI platform. Before the building of the project, we had 3 main learning objectives: - How to design a responsible AI? - How to convince students to use it? - How to convince our university to fund our project? Now that the project is built and has its first 150 users, we want to scale responsibly with 4 main learning objectives: - How to adapt a local AI to a national level? - How to keep a free non-profit model with a growing number of students? - How to create a large institutional adoption? - How to measure the real impact of our AI on students?

As stated, Prometheus already exists, is already funded and is already used by more than 150 students in Sciences Po Bordeaux (prometheus-scpobx.fr/ia/chat). Thus, the goal of this contribution is to scale Prometheus AI in France (and beyond?): we want every university or student association to use our AI for free, to adapt it to the local context and deploy it. The roadmap of this expansion consists of several steps: - first, expand Prometheus AI to universities in Bordeaux and French Instituts d'études politiques - then, to adapt it to different schools by developing a platform allowing each university to create its own AI based on Prometheus AI (for example, a law university could train Prometheus AI on legal documents) - finally (ultimate goal), create a trustworthy AI that can be used by any student at a national level (and maybe dream of more…)