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I've recently found LLMs to be an excellent learning tool, using it hand-in-hand with a textbook to learn digital signal processing. If the book doesn't explain something well, I ask the LLM to explain it. It's not all brain wasting.

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Well said. I use it the same way. Sometimes, a technical book will assume that you know a concept or will even use an acronym that is not explained (but obvious) or is just plainly not very explicit. I also use it to directly test my knowledge of the subject (you have to be careful of the people-pleasing behavior, but in my experience they tend to gently tell you where you're wrong rather than lie to you). Same goes for hands-on books. Sometimes the example are not very interesting, or you have something of your own that you would like to try. As long as you use it carefully like this, it can be really transformative. I do agree that there is a potential risk of offloading too much thinking to it, but if you keep that in mind, I don't see the problem.

Exactly. LLMs are really just an extension of the internet. You can use the internet to expand on what you know or you can use the internet to rot your brain.

We have agency to decide and if the majority decide on brain rot I really don't care.

I have been learning things from the internet for 30 years and LLMs are just the greatest gift. If someone isn't leveraging these tools to increase what they know good luck.

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