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Comment by muldvarp | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely wonder what even is worth learning in the age of AI. It just feels like learning stuff doesn't really matter anymore. Unless you're an expert in some field, a novice with access to an LLM will usually produce better results than you.

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The most important skill with using AI is critical thinking. And that's really only honed by learning and questioning a lot of subjects.

I don't use Calculus in my day job, but it was still valuable for me to learn to hone my ability to think

> And that's really only honed by learning and questioning a lot of subjects.

Sounds like a job for AI.

Where will the experts come from in the future if no one learns and we just accept whatever the Markov chain generates for us from the Bayesian database of old information?

Good question, but that isn't incentivized by capital. We're in an era of massive student loans and unaffordable housing. Unless there's a clear and direct incentive to learn, people will take the easiest path. Life is tough enough as-is.

The number of people that can actually dedicate their life to producing new knowledge is tiny. It's not really that motivating of a reason.

However, we don't know beforehand, which of those people would produce new knowledge.

I'm not arguing to not teach children stuff. All I'm saying is that LLMs made me lose motivation to start learning stuff that I'll never be an expert in.

You still need a decent mental model and mathematical fluency to critically assess the outputs.

Currently. Although producing something yourself (especially if you're not an expert) doesn't guarantee high-quality output either.

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