I think before that question is useful to ask, we have to know if that FAQ even says anything about LLM-based tutoring. After a few minutes of research, I can't find any evidence that Math Academy offers LLM-based tutoring.

This was linked from the homepage: https://www.mathacademy.com/how-our-ai-works

But more importantly if tptacek says they use LLMs and is a user of the platform that's good enough for me.

I'm using LLMs alongside Math Academy. Math Academy uses machine learning generally (and so now they plug their "AI" technology) but it's not transformer-model-style AI ML; as I understand it, it's just driving their underlying spaced repetition system (which is interleaved through lots of different units).

In the scenario I'm discussing, Math Academy's content is a non-generative source of truth, against which I've benchmarked GPT5 and O4-mini.

Everything described there sounds like old-school adaptive algorithms. I don't see anything about generative AI or LLMs.

I asked Google if MA does LLM tutoring and got back this answer:

> Math Academy does not offer Large Language Model (LLM) tutoring. While the company advertises itself as "AI-powered," this is in reference to a machine-learning-based adaptive learning system, not an interactive LLM tutor.

And here is a HN comment that indicates LLMs are a complement to MA, not part of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43281240

You're right, I may have misinterpreted what tptacek said: he said he was using LLMs and that he was using Math Academy but I interpreted that as "Math Academy includes LLM features" - actually it's equally likely he's using Math Academy and having LLMs tutor him on the side.

You're confused. Math Academy isn't LLM-based. I use an LLM alongside it.

I think parent was clearly referring to LLM use, and not math academy.