I had a similar experience recently having GPT-4 teach me double entry bookkeeping for a project I am ramping up on. I understood it in a vague sense from some Google, but wouldn’t be able to talk to a room full of accountants in an intelligent way. I was feeling like I needed to read a book or take a class, but tried using GPT-4 as an interactive tutor instead.

After about an hour of delving into details, examples, history and analogies, I get it on a deep level that would have normally taken many days to develop. Most of the material I found before took an approach of “just memorize this” while I was able to get more parsimonious core concepts that were hidden behind 500 years of practice.