AI that asks questions instead of giving answers, building critical thinking through mind maps
Edtech startup QnSmart has launched DaVinciQ, an AI-powered platform designed to expand students' thinking through debate.
Rather than providing answers, DaVinciQ poses questions to broaden how students think. The company said it developed the platform to address what it calls the "outsourcing of thought" — a problem that arises when generative AI answers questions on students' behalf, discouraging independent reasoning.
When a user enters a keyword of interest, a "humanities-based mind map" branches out across the screen through six perspectives — history, society, philosophy, economics, science, and literature and the arts. Selecting a branch launches a Socratic dialogue with the AI. The company said students repeatedly practice expressing their own ideas in their own words by responding to the AI's questions.
The AI probes logical gaps in a student's answers and identifies what the student does not yet understand. Questions and discussions deepen gradually through cognitive stages — comprehension, application, analysis, inference, criticism and creation. The company said difficulty levels are calibrated to each student's grade, drawing on middle and high school textbook vocabulary and curriculum content.
"We've flipped the conventional model where humans ask and AI answers — here, AI asks the questions and students respond and debate," a QnSmart official said. "It starts from the counterintuitive idea of using AI to solve problems that AI itself created."
freiheit@heraldcorp.com
