You can learn a lot from LLMs though, same with, say, Wikipedia. You need curiosity. You need the desire to learn. If you do not have it, then of course you will get nowhere, LLMs or no LLMs.
“The irony is that I now know more than I ever would have before AI. But I feel slightly dumber. A bit more dull. LLMs give me finished thoughts, polished and convincing, but none of the intellectual growth that comes from developing them myself. The output from AI answers questions. It teaches me facts. But it doesn’t really help me know anything new.”
I think the thesis is that with AI there is less need and incentive to “put the work in” instead of just consuming what the AI outputs, and that in consequence we do the needed work less and atrophy.
Again, you can truly learn a lot using LLMs, but you have to approach it properly. It does not have to be just "facts", and sometimes, even learning "facts" is learning.
I can use LLMs and learn nothing, but I can use LLMs to learn, too!
The effort of verifying everything it claims may or may not outweigh the effort of other means of learning.
So most are not curious. So what do you do for them?
Plus, many kids fail school not because of laziness, but because of their toxic environment.
Kids optimize. When I was in high school I was fully capable of getting straight F's in a class I didn't care about and straight A's in a class I enjoyed.
Why bother learning chemistry when you could instead spend that time coding cool plugins and websites in PHP that thousands of internet strangers are using? I really did build one of the most popular phpBB plugins and knew I was gonna be a software engineer. Not that my chemistry professor cared about any of that or even understood what I'm talking about.
As for what you said, yeah, I got 1s (Fs) because I was too busy coding and reading books on philosophy, as a 14 years old.
Hell, all humans do that. You use every resource available to get out of dealing with things that are not your priority. This means you will never be good at those things and that’s fine. You can’t be good at everything.
I don't disagree with you though.
But, these are kids… Hard to argue that adults should selectively deny education when it is their responsibility to do otherwise.
We don’t neglect the handicapped because it is inconvenient to provide them with assistance.
But the lazy, uncurious person that wants to shortcut everything, that you described? They're not even trying to help themselves. Maybe the best thing to do there is to let a little time pass and for them to see the result of their actions. You can lead a horse to water..
This is most kids, myself included. I’m curious and have done well, but if I could have had essays written for me as a kid for sure I’d have tried. And I’d be off worse for it.
Kids also just want to eat sugar and play video games. As parents and a society, we both provide and force alternatives because as adults we know better.
You can lead a horse to water, sure, but you could also lead it to something filled with their worst instincts. Let’s avoid the later.
Like any other tool, it's more a question of how they're used. For example, I've seen incredible results for students who use ChatGPT to interrogate ideas as they synthesize them. So, for example, "I'm reading this passage PASSAGE and I'm confused about phrase X. The core idea seems similar to Y, which I am familiar with. if I had to explain X, I'd put it like this ATTEMPT Can you help me understand what I'm missing?"
The results are very impressive. I'd encourage you to try it out if you haven't.
I try to use AI to automate things I already know and force myself to learn things I don't know.
It takes discipline/curiosity but it can be a net positive.
They should just simply try it. Start with something you actually know to see how useful it might be to you with your prompts.