Have you actually verified anything you've learned from it, or are you just taking everything it says as gospel?

Of course, I’m not an idiot and I understand LLM very well. But generally as far as well documented stuff goes and stuff that exists it’s almost 100% accurate. It’s when you ask it to extrapolate or discuss topics that are fiction (even without realizing) you stray. Asking it to reason is a bad idea as it fundamentally is unable to reason and any approximation of reasoning is precisely that. Generally though for effectively information retrieval of well documented subjects it’s invariably accurate and can answer relatively nuanced questions.

How do I know what is well documented with established agreement on process/subject, though? Wouldn't this be super open to ignorance bias?

Because I’m a well educated grown up and am familiar with a great many subjects that I want to learn more about. How do you? I can’t help you with that. You might be better off waiting for the technology to mature more. It’s very nascent but I’m sure in the fullness of time you might feel comfortable asking it questions on basic optics and photography and other well documented subjects with established agreement on process etc, once you establish your own basis for what those subjects are. In the mean time I’m super excited for this interface to mature for my own use!! (It is true tho I do love and live dangerously!)

> You might be better off waiting for the technology to mature more. It’s very nascent but I’m sure in the fullness of time you might feel comfortable asking it questions on basic optics and photography and other well documented subjects

Or open a book right now.

Are those mutually exclusive activities?

"We talked through and I got to an understanding in a way having read manuals and textbooks didn’t really help before."

You can't have a discussion with a book.

Good thing to do regardless of the source, AI or Human, right?

I do verify by using topics I'm an expert in and I find hallucination to be less of an issue than depth of nuance.

For topics I'm just learning, depth of nuance goes over my head anyways.

I agree with this as good practice in general, but I think the human vs LLM thing is not a great comparison in this case.

When I ask a friend something I assume that they are in good faith telling me what they know. Now, they could be wrong (which could be them saying "I'm not 100% sure on this") or they could not be remembering correctly, but there's some good faith there.

An LLM, on the other hand, just makes up facts and doesn't know if they're incorrect or not or even what percentage sure it is. And to top things off, it will speak with absolute certainty the whole time.

That’s why I never make friends with my LLMs. It’s also true that when I use a push motorized lawn mower it has a different safety operating model than a weed whacker vs a reel mower vs an industrial field cutter and bailing system. But we still use all of these regularly and no one points out the industrial device is extraordinarily dangerous and there’s a continuum of safety with different techniques to address the challenges for the user to adopt. Arguably LLMs maybe shouldn’t be used by the uniformed to make medical decisions and maybe it’s dangerous that people do. But in the mean time I’m fine with having access to powerful tools and using them with caution but using them for what gives me value. I’m sure we will safety wrap everything if soon enough to the point it’s useless and wrapped in advertisements for our safety.

I do similar stuff, I'm just willing to learn a lot more at the cost of a small percent of my knowledge being incorrect from hallucinations, just a personal opinion. Sure human produced sources of info is gonna be more accurate (more not 100% still), and I'll default to that for important stuff.

But the difference is I actually want to and do use this interface more.

Also even if I learn completely factual information, I'm still probably going to misremember some facts myself.

it's rarely wrong when it comes to concepts - it's the facts and numbers that it hallucinates.

Just like learning from another human. A person can teach you the higher level concepts of some programming language but wouldn't remember the entire standard library.

it's more reliable than the facts most of my friends tell me

I think this is probably one of the most compelling personal uses for a tool like this, but your use of it begs the same question as every other activity that amounts to more pseudo-intellectual consumption; what is the value of that information, and how much of ones money and time should be allocated to digesting (usually high-level) arbitrary information?

If I was deliberately trying to dive deep on one particular hobby, or trying to understand how a particular algorithm works, there's clear value in spending concentrated time to learn that subject, deliberately focused and engaged with it, and a system like your describe might play a role in that. If I'm in school and forced to quickly learn a bunch of crap I'll be tested on, then the system has defined another source of real value, at least in the short term. But if I'm diving deep on one particular hobby and filling my brain with all sorts of other ostensibly important information, I think that just amounts at best to more entertainment that fakes its way above other aspects of life in the hierarchy of ways one could spend time (the irony of me saying this in a comment on HN is not lost on me).

Earlier in my life I figured it would be worthwhile to read articles on the bus, or listen to non-fiction podcasts, because knowledge is inherently valuable and there's not enough time, and if I just wore earbuds throughout my entire day, I'd learn so much! How about at the gym, so much wasted learning time while pushing weights, keep those earbuds in! A walk around the neighborhood? On the plane? On the train? All time that could be spent learning about some bs that's recently become much easier to access, or so my 21 y.o self would have me believe.

But I think now it's a phony and hollow existence if you're just cramming your brain with all sorts of stuff in the background or in marginally more than a passive way. I could listen to a lot of arbitrary German language material, but realistically the value I'd convince myself I'd get out of any of that is lost if I'm not about to take that home and grind it out for hours, days, move to a German speaking country, have an existing intense interest in untranslatable German art, or have literally any reason to properly learn a language and dedicate real expensive time to it.

I did this information sponge phase up until my mid-40s with burnout. Now I wish I had invested some of that time in learning social skills.

These days, if something sparks my interest, I get an ebook on it or spend 15 mns collecting materials. Then I add it to the hoard of “read someday”. And go back to the task on hand. If I’m going to learn something, then I do it properly (The goal is to be able to explain it without reciting word by word). And I’d want proper materials for that.

This is pretty much what I do too, although lately I try and reduce how much things I add to that list and have stopped caring about whether or not I actually get back to it. Anything that I feel I can devote the time to and that I feel compelled enough to, will resurface.

Learning for learning's sake, or without a distinct goal to use the information you're learning in the future, isn't necessarily a bad thing. That is, unless you think that learning so widely is going to translate into something more than it is, like magic or something. Being well-rounded is a good goal for people to achieve, imo.

Being well-rounded and learning for learning's sake is absolutely something that keeps you growing as a person imo. My take is just that it's worth being critical of what one needs to learn, how much work it would actually take, and whether they really are engaging with the subject in a way that can be called learning rather than information entertainment or some other extremely low level.

With pure knowledge, it's a bit easier to convince yourself that putting in some airpods and listening to a subject while you're actually dividing your attention with the act of driving, is effective "learning". But with things that inherently require more physical engagement, this would seem a bit silly. You can't really watch YouTube video or ask ChatGPT how to kickflip on a skateboard and convince yourself that you've learned much. You need to go to a parking lot and rep out 1000 attempts.

My argument is just that passive digestion of information has an opportunity cost, and unless you're already engaged enough to take it to the streets somehow, you're paying a high opportunity cost whereby those moments could be enjoyed as the periodic gaps they are