Microsoft taught its AI tutor by reading only three essays

Microsoft & University of Illinois created StudentSim, a tool which can simulate a person’s student based on very limited information. In our class of 60 students, the median student had written 3 papers, with more than 2/3rds writing 5 or fewer papers. We outperformed GPT-5.4 in predicting chess moves by approximately a factor of 2. The top-performing AI tutor was trained on simulated students and received high ratings from experts for explanation quality and personalization.

What excites me most about this is that we’ve been limited by the data we have on individuals. Now, with just 3 papers, we can simulate a good student, allowing us to build educational agents even for small populations with limited data.