I recently got into a debate with a friend who swears is “Against AI Slop”, but uses AI for 90% of his researching stuff. When i point it out, i got a 20 minute rant about how AI helps him learn and makes him learn faster, but i see massive issues with this. For once, using AI even as a starting point is a gamble, if not a straight damage to the learning process as a whole, mainly because sloppified information spit out by an LLM is often simplified, imprecise and oversimplified. For example, he told me to be interested in Arch Linux, but said the Arch Wiki was too “difficult to understand and took knowledge for granted” and told me that AI helped him understanding it. However i think that the wiki being verbose and designed to not be understandable by everybody is a filter to make sure that you don’t go and use Arch if you can’t understand the wiki, not for gatekeeping, but because a sloppified and short version of processes explained in the wiki will result in you knowing WHAT to do, but often not HOW and WHY. Also, it keeps you locked to AI since if you get used to the simplification (and often misinformation) given by the slop generator, it’ll be hard to understand the real sources, and it’ll be hard to learn the jargon and will lead to an incomplete result. I could go on for days and feel free to debate me, but I am tired of pretending that AI is a great learning tool. It can be, but in its current status it’s just not, and when it can be, IMO the other cons that come with AI usage outweigh the possible value of the info.
All systems based on LLM, ML, or anything that is algorithmically based on feedback system, learning, training, is indeterministic, and hence, always inaccurate, unreliable, and irresponsible systems, by design.
That is, it may be fun to play with as a toy, as any ML/LLM/AI based system, where no trust exist but only probability, entropy, chance, luck… but nothing serious, time-rewarding, or humane enough to appreciate and love it in the long run.
These are impossible to rely on, and absolutely not for education, for learning, for human mind foundational processes, for any kind of mind and actual knowledge development you care about and want to actually realize, remember, experience, to learn and carry with you for the infinite future…
These people you describe don’t have children, I believe.
They come from infants, immature, children, too, sorry… from those who could not care less about the history, responsibility, human being a miracle of unique and incredible…
They don’t care about the overall process of the life of us, people, to learn, realize, create, to find solutions, to make mistakes and learn from it, to reach the goals, to treasure achievements, to write our history with actual names of people on papers signed by hand or not but still referred to people who experienced, and passed it further with hope that is a miracle…
They do not care about what will leave after us, the effort, human realized knowledge, the art, the statues, the shapes/sayings/quotes/ideas… in the infinite history of us, and the ineffably magnificent world…