20ish. What's your hypothesis?

It's basically laid out in the article: the reason that you are able to gain so much from LLMs is because of your decades of experience that predated their existence. Ability begets ability, but if that ability doesn't take root, these more advanced toolsets don't yield the same outcome (and are likely to do harm).

To be clear, I feel the same way as you. I have been doing this for about twenty-five years, and I have developed a keen sense of taste and judgment to know how to properly scrutinize and utilize these systems. I definitely feel like I am able to learn things faster, but that is directly correlated to having experienced a lot of friction over the years that cultivated said taste and judgment in the first place.

I imagine it's sort of similar to someone who's just getting started in mathematics, but is introduced to WolframAlpha, versus someone with decades of experience in the field and what they learn with it.