Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and it was wrong sometimes, sure. A known limitation. But that's the entire problem and I don't understand why it's just put aside like that. LLMs are wrong sometimes, and they often just don't give you the details and, in my opinion, knowing about certain details and traps of a language is very very important, if you plan on doing more with it than just having fun. Now someone will come around the corner and say '…
It's not my experience that there are missing pieces as compared to anything else. Nobody can write an exhaustive tome and explore every feature, use, problem, and pitfall of Python, for example. Every text on the topic will omit something. It's hardly a criticism. I don't want exhaustive. The llm taught me what I asked it to teach me. That's what I hope it will do, not try to caution me about everything I could do w…
Study mode
131–140 of 828 posts
Re: Study mode
#132I'll personally attest: LLM's have been absolutely incredible to self learn new things post graduation. It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed. Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. Now, everyone ba…
> It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed No, not really. > Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. Your experience isn't universal. Some students learned how to do research in school.
Re: Study mode
#133Helping you parse notation, especially in new domains, is insanely valuable. I do a lot of applied math in statistics/ML, but when I open a physics book the notation and comfort with short hand is a real challenge (likewise I imagine the reverse is equally as annoying). Having an LLM on demand to instantly clear up notation is a massive speed boost.
Reading German Idealist philosophy requires an enormous amount of context. Being able to ask an LLM questions like "How much of this section of Mainländer is coming directly from Schopenhauer?" is a godsend in helping understand which parts of the writing a merely setting up what is already agreed upon vs laying new ground.
And the most important for self study: verifying your understanding. Backtracking because you misunderstood a fundamental concept is a huge time sync in self study. Now, every time I read a formula I can go through all of my intuitions and understanding about it, write them down, and verify. Even a "not quite..." from an LLM is enough to make me realize I need to spend more time on that section.
Books are still the highest density information source and best way to learn, but LLMs can do a lot to accelerate this.
Re: Study mode
#134An acquaintance of mine has a start-up in this space and uses OpenAI to do essentially the same thing. This must look like, and may well be, the guillotine for him... It's my primary fear building anything on these models, they can just come eat your lunch once it looks yummy enough. Tread carefully
> "they can just come eat your lunch once it looks yummy enough. Tread carefully" True, and worse, they're hungry because it's increasingly seeming like "hosting LLMs and charging by the token" is not terribly profitable. I don't really see a path for the major players that isn't "Sherlock everything that achieves traction".
As long as features like Study Mode are little more than creative prompting, any provider will eventually be able to offer them and offer token-based charging.
Re: Study mode
#135Re: Study mode
#136I'll personally attest: LLM's have been absolutely incredible to self learn new things post graduation. It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed. Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. Now, everyone ba…
You can always ask in stack exchange, IRC or forums.
Re: Study mode
#137Is that not something that was already possible with basically every AI provider by prompting it to develop learning steps and not to provide you with a direct answer? I've used this quite a bit when learning new topics and pretty much every provider does this without a specialized model.
Re: Study mode
#138I'll personally attest: LLM's have been absolutely incredible to self learn new things post graduation. It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed. Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. Now, everyone ba…
sorry but if you've gone to university, in particular at a time when internet access was already ubiquitous, surely you must have been capable to find an answer to a programming problem by consulting documentation, manual, or tutorials which exist on almost any topic.
I'm not saying the chatbot interface is necessarily bad, it might be more engaging, but it literally does not present you with information you couldn't have found yourself.
If someone has a computer science degree and tells me without stack exchange they can't find solutions to basic problems that is a red flag. That's like the article about the people posted here who couldn't program when their LLM credits ran out
Re: Study mode
#139Re: Study mode
#140I would like to see randomized control group studies using study mode. Does it offer meaningful benefits to students over self directed study? Does it out perform students who are "learning how to learn"? What affect does allowing students to make mistakes have compared to being guided through what to review? I would hope Study Mode would produce flash card prompts and quantize information for usage in spaced repetit…
It doesn’t do any of that, it just captures the student market more. They want a student to use it and say “I wouldn’t have learned anything without study mode”. This also allows them to fill their data coffers more with bleeding edge education. “Please input the data you are studying and we will summarize it for you.”