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 personally use it's answers as a jumping off point to do my own research, or I ask it for sources directly about things and check those out. I frequently use LLMs for learning about topics, but definitely don't take anything they say at face value.
For a personal example, I use ChatGPT as my personal Japanese tutor. I use it discuss and break down nuances of various words or sayings, names of certain conjugation forms etc. etc., and it is absolutely not 100% correct, but I can now take the names of things that it gives me in native Japanese that I never would have known and look them up using other resources. Either it's correct and I find confirming information, or it's wrong and I can research further independently or ask it follow up questions. It's certainly not as good as a human native speaker, but for $20 a month and as someone who likes enjoys doing their own research, I fucking love it.
Hey, that's a cool thing to do! I'll try it. Learning a new language through LLMs sounds cool.
It is! Just be aware that it won't always be right. It's good to verify things with additional sources (as with anything, really).