alt Hacker NewsBut why would there be any difference between a teacher giving you the shortcut or AI giving you the shortcut?
AI can give you 1000s of exercises and explain in great detail exactly how to solve them, and what you're doing wrong, as well as where you suck, explore other ways of solving and where you should improve. Learning to integrate or solve differential equations with Gemini is 10x better than even the good teachers I've had. It beats bad teachers because it's just simply better than them, and it really increases what you can learn from good teachers.
And the same goes for critiquing writing, whether code or prose. I do prose like 1/10th of the time, code much more often, but the problem with my writing is usually relatively basic grammar and consistent style problems. Also using codex with "I've written X, break my code" usually gives ... I should say usually more insight than I was ready for.
In the case you described you aren't using AI as a shortcut to an answer but rather to emulate what a teacher would. If you were to then use AI to answer the questions it brings up for you you would have learned nothing in the process. Its like asking your teacher to solve the problems for you. You have an answer but also no growth.
But yes one could argue that using AI not as a means for answering a class's problems but rather to generate more exercises could be valid. Though I doubt students have a lack of practice problems these days.
I find AI is a bad communicator. So it is quite awkward to take advice on prose from a system that generates bad prose, though that could be possible. Still it is unclear, one would have to judge what benefits arise.
Now my earlier point was not that AI is not useful in any way. It is useful with code. Though there is the larger conversation on developer enjoyment etc in the age of AI coding--where the speed of AI generated code is expected, and developers are more alienated from aspects that made coding enjoyable.