Okay, please ask an LLM to produce a 200 page intro book to Abstract Algebra. Even Astra high can barely write 30 pages coherently.

Humans have LOOONG contexts

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missedthecue 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why is having your LLM one-shot a 200 page textbook a prerequisite to learning? That doesn't follow. If you use an LLM more like a tutor and less like a book, you can get an enormous amount of value for 1/50 the cost. Monthly GPT plus membership is half the cost of a bay area hourly tutor rate, and infinitely patient and available 24/7

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vatsachak 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay I was a professor for a bit. Few things I found

- LLMs cannot motivate a person to learn because they aren't people

- Learning requires rewiring your brain; you need to try and read content without explanations of every question you might have. Struggling is required for learning

- LLMs cannot generate structured content on long scales. I have tried this many times. Your average TA can easily write a calculus textbook.

- LLMs are RLHFd to just agree with you. Learning requires disagreement and tutoring requires assuredness

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ordersofmag 2 hours ago | parent [-]

These are all silly non-problems (speaking as someone who works with lots of professors around how to put AI systems to effective use)

-the thing that motivates you doesn't have to be the same thing that teaches you (e.g. a book can be a useful learning tool even if it isn't human)

-you can absolutely choose to interact with an LLM in ways that generate productive struggle. If you naively ask it for answers it won't be much use in this regard. But that's just a poor choice of how to use the tool. Just like hitting yourself on the head with a book doesn't mean the problem is with the book as learning tool.

-You don't need structured content 'on long scales' to learn. You learn a little bit at a time. Long textbooks are a side effect of the economics of moving paper around. Not a prerequisite for learning. An LLM will happily mimic the table of contents of a textbook or an outline for course. And you can use future prompts to generate the bits you need as you need them. One-shoting a textbook is a silly use of the tool. Plus, we're not short on textbooks. We're short on ways students can get customized help: answers to the specific ill-posed questions they have in their heads. LLM's are quite good at this. You can have textbooks AND LLM's (and professors)

-LLM's are happy to disagree with you. Just ask them to and they oblige. Ask them to respond as if they were a tutor and they will mimic the assuredness if appropriate.

	▲	vatsachak 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		- Only highly self motivated learners can learn from a book. Most students needed lecture and office hours. - Students (Humans) aren't going to struggle on average. They're always going to take the path of least resistance. I know of some successful algebraic geometers who did indeed hit their head on heartshorne in grad school. - a) Structured content generated on long scales is way more effective because you can tie together many details. It would be weird to learn from chapters, each unrelated to each other in style and content. - b) We're actually not short on students getting help. Office hours were abound at my university. I actually found that customized help was detrimental; if a TA answered every question a student had, the student wouldn't put the effort into trying to learn the material. Imo you want to see students struggle. I've seen students go from F to A- by just forcing them to struggle on the content. - Not really. I discuss complicated math and programming with models regularly and when I say something like "actually you're wrong" they say "yes, you're right". If I ask them to be confident, they will not change their wrong answers. Humans have a much better conception of self and opinions than LLMs

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BeetleB 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Okay, please ask an LLM to produce a 200 page intro book to Abstract Algebra.

If you're giving it prompts like that, you've shot yourself in the foot.