this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Like any tool, it depends how you use it. I have been learning a lot of math recently and have been chatting with AI to increase my understanding of the concepts. There are times when the textbook shows some steps that I don't understand why they're happening and I've questioned AI about it. Sometimes it takes a few tries of asking until you figure out the right question to ask to get the right answer you need, but that process of thinking helps you along the way anyways by crystallizing in your brain what exactly it is that you don't understand.
I have found it to be a very helpful tool in my educational path. However I am learning things because I want to understand them, not because I have to pass a test and that determination in me to want to understand is a big difference. Just getting hints to help you solve the problem might not really help in the long run, but it you're actually curious about what you're learning and focus on getting a deeper understanding of why and how something works rather than just getting the right answer, it can be a very useful tool.
Why are you so confident that the things you are learning from AI are correct? Are you just using it to gather other sources to review by hand or are you trying to have conversations with the AI?
We've all seen AI get the correct answer but the show your work part is nonsense, or vice versa. How do you verify what AI outputs to you?
I, like the OP, was also studying math from a textbook and using GPT4 to help clear things up. GPT4 caught an error in the textbook.
The LLM doesn't have a theory of mind, it wont start over and try to explain a concept from a completely new angle, it mostly just repeats the same stuff over and over. Still, once I have figured something out, I can ask the LLM if my ideas are correct and it sometimes makes small corrections.
Overall, most of my learning came from the textbook, and talking with the LLM about the concepts I had learned helped cement them in my brain. I didn't learn a whole lot from the LLM directly, but it was good enough to confirm what I learned from the textbook and sometimes correct mistakes.
If you didn't have AI, what would you have done instead?