LLMs are indeed excellent as conversation partners for helping with difficult concepts or for working through problem sheets. They’re really opened up self-learning for me again in math. You can use them to go much deeper with concepts much deeper than the course you’re taking - e.g. I was relearning some basic undergrad probability and stats but ended up exploring a bit of measure theory using Gemini as well. I would go so far as to say that an LLM can be more effective for explaining things than a randomly selected graduate student (though some grad students with a particular talent for teaching will be better).

What the LLM still does not provide is accountability (a LLM isn’t going to stop you from skipping a problem set) and the human social component. But you could potentially get that from a community of other self-learners covering the same material if you’re able to pull one together.