As a counterpoint, I am self-studying physics while relearning the calculus and math I took in undergrad.

AI has been immensely valuable, but I suspect only so because I am intrinsically motivated to learn this material. When I make errors in solving problems due to a confusion in understanding, it can help me work through the problem the same way a TA would, without having to wait and where I can ask a million clarifying questions until the idea is concrete in my mind.

Could I abuse it to just answer questions for me? Absolutely. But since that’s at odds with my actual goal, I don’t.

I read a quote that I think is analogous to AI usage. Knowledge cannot be transferred it can only be learned.

Math in general is something that you don't need to know until you need to know it, the problem with "just in time" learning is that if you don't already know it then you won't even be able to know when it's needed and which specific bits of math you need to learn for the specific situation you find yourself in.

If you don't know math, you often won't be able to even realize when math is needed.

There's a Steve Yegge quote about this:

> You'll gradually realize that your math deficiencies aren't just something that you might need to beef up on if you ever "need to"; you'll see that virtually every problem space has a mathematical modeling component that you were blissfully unaware of until Done, and Gets Things Smart gal points it out to you and says, "There's an infinitely smarter approach, which by the way I implemented over the weekend." You stare slack-jawed for a little while, and then she says: "Here's a ball. Why don't you go bounce it?"

If you overly rely on the computer assistance during the learning stage, there are fundamental principles you won't get a firm grasp on, and then you'll be at a disadvantage if you need it later. As someone who did use calculus after school, I'm glad I actually learned the subject.

You're right that most people don't need to know calculus in their lives, but to my knowledge calculus also isn't generally required to get through college/university for most people, so it's fair to assume that the people in the course are there because they need or want to learn it. When I was a TA for calculus, most of my students were pre-med, engineers, or in other sciences.

> if you are, you'll get to use all the computer assisting tools you want

I've done work on fluid simulations. It sure would have been nice to understand the buttons being pushed so I can better validate what's going on.

And I think I did well in calculus. Just not "mastery of multi-variable calculus to transform fluid dynamics formulas into software" well.

Calculus can get pretty heavy, but I really value the comfort it gave me of the concepts of velocity and acceleration, (not to speak of higher orders) of which I am sure I wouldn’t understand nearly as well without the calculus background. I’m sure for most of HN velocity and acceleration, etc seem like super basic concepts, but I just don’t think I could apply the mental models as easily as before I took calculus.

That's wishful thinking. I have been placed into professional situations where I needed calculus and, as I found out to my sorrow, all the CAS software packages in the world wouldn't have helped because I didn't have/remember enough math fundamentals. The CAS cannot provide any kind of answer if you don't know how to ask it the right questions.

Teachers earned their titles, they had to prove repeatedly that they are fit for a job that includes proving that you can learn things, that you have a logical thinking, that you are a decent enough person and that you have developped the social skills to lead a bunch of volcanic young people, taking the best paths to their grow and benefit.

AI is just the weird guy that sneaked its way in, without any reference. That is know to lie often in a very convincing way, specially when it does not have an answer, and that can be persuaded to include a lot of weird random ideas or fake facts in their classes.

> In 5 years I don't think you're going to be able to get away from LLMs if you care about correctness

Okay. Let’s revisit this in five years. In the meantime, let’s not experiment on our kids.

>don't further their education and cause them to lose interest in the subject.

Yes, that's my issue. The study is focused on grades and I'm more concerned about deeper logical thinking. You don't get the latter without some friction, and that let's you build up for skills needed in high school and beyond.

The mechanical ability of typing 1+1 into a calculator isn't my concern. It's the ability to know why you're typing 1+1 in as an intermediate step in solving real problems.

I might have misremembered then, or maybe it was someone else.

It's more like showing up to the gym with a fake muscle suit and then everyone can see you can't lift shit.

Missing information is different from paying the person who steals information instead of paying the person that produces it. Did you bother to think critically before you replied, or is an AI doing all your thinking as well?

LLMs are very good at convincing people they are learning, because they give answers quickly and fairly accurately. But that makes them bad teachers, not better teachers. The fact that LLMs are good problem solvers is to their detriment when it comes to teaching. We don't want to solve problems in this domain, we want to slowly trickle information and build practice so students can solve problems.

I think people conflate productivity for learning. LLMs can greatly help with productivity. But... so can hiring an employee. Well, what have you learned? Nothing, you outsourced 90% of it. You decidedly learned less than if you were less productive and did it yourself.

LLMs have enormous capacity for supporting a person who is motivated to learn and wants individualized support and instruction. That doesn’t describe all students and there’s no reason why seat time in the classroom should be used that way - students can still use an LLM to help them learn if they’re motivated to do that, but not during class.

Confidently pretends to have understanding of every subject but is frequently spectacularly wrong

Sure, classroom sizes can be a detriment to those that require more hands on instruction time. But that's not everyone and not every school suffers from overcrowding.

LLMs are also more flattering

LLMs greatly remove the social aspect of the teacher-student relationship. They are probably fine for tutoring and replacing things like Khan Academy but they are no substitute for a human teacher.

They can, but I don't think we are there yet. No need to sending taxpayer dollars to silicon valley on educating the next generation using a new technology that hasn't proven itself in education yet.

Yeah, it's the speed-running homework and unchecked potential for misinformation that are really problematic. I agree that if it was only a more efficient and accessible repository of information, it wouldn't be nearly as bad, and that's partly what I was getting at in my top-comment (the "may be a version of AI that helps people learn" part).