I don’t think this is a critique of llms so much as a general observation that actual deep learning is difficult.

I’ve read plenty of books (thanks, Dickens) where I looked at every word on every page but can recall very little of what they meant. You can look at the results from an llm and say “huh cool, I know that now) and do nothing to assimilate that knowledge, or you can think deeply about it and try to fit it in with everything else you know about the subject. The advantage here is that you can ask follow-up questions if something doesn’t click.

It's not a critique of LLMs, but it is a reason to be wary of the claim that it really helps you learn.

We have the idea of 'tutorial hell' for programming (particularly gamedev), where people go through the motions of learning without actually progressing.

Until you go apply the skills and check, it's hard to evaluate the effectiveness of a learning method.