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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

AI makes me worse at programming but helps me learn things much more quickly than reading textbooks. Both can be true.

> but helps me learn things much more quickly than reading textbooks

Have you tested this against an external metric of competence? The research seems to show that AI is great at making you feel you know something. But I think the studies looking at language learning found those using AI extensively tested below peers using traditional methods.

I don't care what the studies say. It's an incredibly good tutor.

AI helps me fill gaps in my knowledge quickly rather than hunting around for hours for exactly the right chapter which kind-of-but-not-quite explains the concept I am hunting for.

> It's an incredibly good tutor

It feels like a good tutor. If you aren’t externally benchmarking your comprehension, you really can’t say.

> helps me fill gaps in my knowledge quickly rather than hunting around for hours for exactly the right chapter

Have you considered that learning to phrase your questions is part of indexing and thus learning a subject?

I’m not saying AI can’t help with that search process. But we have no evidence it helps and lots of evidence it hurts, and everyone with anecdotes to the contrary seems to be going off vibes around how much they learned without any external reference.

You don't always need the same level of deep knowledge on everything you do. A lot of things in software development requires some basic level understanding of some obscure API you would never use again. LLM definitely speed up that part.

> A lot of things in software development requires some basic level understanding of some obscure API you would never use again

This is glorified look-up. AI is great at this! Learning through look-up doesn’t work.

Elsewhere in this thread is someone arguing they learned linear algebra through AI. I’d love to be surprised by their acing an exam. I’m thoroughly doubtful they could get through one. AI is trained to be a sycophant, not to teach. Maybe one day we will solve this. I have seen zero evidence we have that today.

Be careful. Speed of learning isn't necessarily the goal. Durability is another metric. I learn more quickly with LLMs, too, but it's certainly questionable if that learning is as durable or deep as learning through struggling with a book.

The students of lowly-rated profs had better 10-year outcomes than those with highly-rated profs according to a study that I think came out of the Naval Institute a decade or two ago. "No shine without friction."

We need more data. Certainly turning students loose with AI stunts them. There's probably some happy medium. But where kids need the most practice with fundamentals when they're young, a blanket ban for now seems sensible. And it also seems like a good plan to introduce it when they get older. I suspect we'll learn a lot from this Norwegian experiment.

Yes, but (I assume) that you are old enough to have already gone through elementary school and perhaps further and learned and internalized a model for learning and retaining information.

I think that is what is at risk.

Oddly enough, I never was able to learn things from textbooks, except in the context of a traditional classroom lecture course. I've also met maybe one or two people in my life who were able to learn the subjects of my college majors -- math and physics -- at any level from a textbook alone.

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