alt Hacker NewsWhy 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
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