100% agree. They are not good teachers. Nevertheless I've been using LLMs more and more to learn complex topics, but my learning is always anchored in something else:
- Getting through textbooks and lecture notes. LLMs have gotten very good at answering basic questions on quite advanced material (e.g. representation theory and quantum field theory). By asking a very specific question or even giving the LLM a screenshot, I can get unstuck a lot faster.
- Learning e.g. new python packages. Instead of hunting for examples on Stack Exchange, now I ask an LLM to write a minimal working example and then build off of that. By writing most of the remaining code myself and only using the LLM to answer questions, I've been able to learn new packages significantly faster.
In both cases, the LLM isn't providing the curriculum or guiding what I learn. The textbooks, papers and coding tasks are. But now I can pick these things up much more efficiently.
- Getting through textbooks and lecture notes. LLMs have gotten very good at answering basic questions on quite advanced material (e.g. representation theory and quantum field theory). By asking a very specific question or even giving the LLM a screenshot, I can get unstuck a lot faster.
- Learning e.g. new python packages. Instead of hunting for examples on Stack Exchange, now I ask an LLM to write a minimal working example and then build off of that. By writing most of the remaining code myself and only using the LLM to answer questions, I've been able to learn new packages significantly faster.
In both cases, the LLM isn't providing the curriculum or guiding what I learn. The textbooks, papers and coding tasks are. But now I can pick these things up much more efficiently.