I asked an LLM the first example question (convert 3 minutes to seconds), and it provided not just the answer, but that there are 60 seconds per minutes, so that's 3 * 60 = 180. I don't think an 11 year old is harmed by that sort of assistance.
I find knowing the multiplication tables to be essential. It consumes too much time and distraction to pull out a computing device for everything. I assume you don't use your phone for simple addition either.
"I told Mrs. C fractions were useless and I never needed them, in your face Mrs. C"
The thing about knowledge is that you only know when it was useful if you know it, you will never know when you miss it.
This is a bit sad and dangerous.
I also resisted learning the multiplication tables because I was too prideful in being able to calculate them on the spot, but at least I memoized the easy ones like 5x 10x, 9x.
The objective of multiplication tables is not to be able to do the calculations that you need, but to aid in wider calculations. You learn the table of multiplications not because most calculations are going to be 1 digit by 1 digit, but because most calculations of more digits can be decomposed into single digit calculations. And further most calculations are part of more complex non math Chains of Thought.
Your teacher was building up your cache and LUT so that you could solve these in nanoseconds, and move on to higher order processes in your head. You haven't beaten the system by calling a 200ms API, you have cooked your ALU.
for example instead of multiplying 47*30 one can multiply 50*30 and subtract 3*30
the real benefit is the mathematical muscle gained while doing the memorization and identifying patterns.
same reason people are running treadmill not to get to the destination point, and despite having cars which are faster than running
This is just the perfection of that. And it’s suuuuper scary, because it trains you to be a brain dead monkey that literally believes anything ChatGPT tells you. And we know how that’ll work out.
With or without AI, we have always thought we are of wildly above average intelligence and that “all the other people are brain dead zombies.”
This is just a classic human bias since we don’t ever experience what goes on inside anyones head but ours.
Everything is going to be just fine.
A calculator eliminates the arithmetic part, thus doing “all” of “2+2”.
Half the point if a word problem is learning how to set up the arithmetic. “Convert 3 minutes to seconds”. You are learning that there are 60 seconds in a minute, that you have to use multiplication, and that the result is in seconds, not something else you need to convert.
The LLM does ALL of this for you. You literally just have to copy / paste.
Zero learning
Yeah... good and useful.