[Xeronate]

Is it true that it's bad for learning new skills? My gut tells me it's useful as long as I don't use it to cheat the learning process and I mainly use it for things like follow up questions.

[deaux]

It is, it can be an enormous learning accelerator for new skills, for both adults and genuinely curious kids. The gap between low and high performancer will explode. I can tell you that if I had LLMs I would've finished schooling at least 25% quicker, while learning much more. When I say this on HN some are quick to point out the fallibility of LLMs, ignoring that the huge majority of human teachers are many times more fallible. Now this is a privileged place where many have been taught by what is indeed the global top 0.1% of teachers and professors, so it makes more sense that people would respond this way. Another source of these responses is simply fear.

In e.g. the US, it's a huge net negative because kids aren't probably taught these values and the required discipline. So the overwhelming majority does use it to cheat the learning process.

I can't tell you if this is the same inside e.g. China. I'm fairly sure it's not nearly as bad though as kids there derive much less benefit from cheating on homework/the learning process, as they're more singularly judged on standardized tests where AI is not available.

[sfink]

Fallibility isn't the problem. It's probably a net benefit for learning.

Promoting dependency is the problem. Replacing effort is the problem. Making self-discipline be a thing only for suckers is the problem.

[loveparade]

I think what it comes down to, and where many people get confused, is separating the technology itself from how we use it. The technology itself is incredible for learning new skills, but at the same time it incentivizes people to not learn. Just because you have an LLM doesn't mean you can skip the hard parts of doing textbook exercises and thinking hard about what you are learning. It's a bit similar to passively watching youtube videos. You'd think that having all these amazing university lectures available on youtube makes people learn much faster, but in reality in makes people lazy because they believe they can passively sit there, watch a video, do nothing else, and expect that to replace a classroom education. That's not how humans learn. But it's not because youtube videos or LLMs are bad learning tools, it's because people use them as mental shortcut where they shouldn't.

[sfink]

I fully agree, but to be fair these chatbots hack our reward systems. They present a cost/benefit ratio where for much less effort than doing it ourselves we get a much better result than doing it ourselves (assuming this is a skill not yet learned). I think the analogy to calculators is a good one if you're careful with what you're considering: calculators did indeed make people worse at mental math, yet mental math can indeed be replaced with calculators for most people with no great loss. Chatbots are indeed making people worse at mental... well, everything. Thinking in general. I do not believe that thinking can be replaced with AI for most people with no great loss.

[Aerroon]

I found it useful for learning to write prose. There's nothing quite like instantaneous feedback when learning. The downside was that I hit the limit of the LLM's capabilities really quickly. They're just not that good at writing prose (overly flowery and often nonsensical).

LLMs were great for getting started though. If you've never tried writing before, then learning a few patterns goes a long way. ("He verbed, verbing a noun.")