[tjr]

Maybe a bit depressing, but I'm not sure loaded. I was just talking to someone (in person!) a few days ago, who purported that online courses were basically dead, because people can learn from LLMs instead.

And then, it seems to be a real issue amongst some people to ask, "why should I learn X, when LLMs already know it?" Not unlike, "why should I learn to divide, when we have calculators?" but on a grander scale.

[pjbk]

Statements like these always brings me to memory the opening line of Hamming's Numerical Methods book: The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. It is very easy to get carried away and forget that - in particular today when processing power grows exponentially. Even more when we know there are a myriad of problems that are uncomputable, literally, and human common sense and intuition (insight) are as relevant now as ever.

[camdenreslink]

My hypothesis is people will get burned out on this unguided learning via LLMs and still want some sort of curated/guided learning experience through material to understand some subject.

There is the problem of "I don't know what I don't know" that a course can solve for you. An LLM can sort of do that, but you have to take its word for it, and it does it pretty much strictly worse at the moment (but is much more flexible).

[jcynix]

> My hypothesis is people will get burned out on this unguided learning via LLMs [...]

I'm less optimistic. Already 20+ years ago many people complained if you pointed them to books which answered their questions in depth. The standard reply was "just tell me how to solve this particular problem" instead.

[nottorp]

<cough> StackOverflow... they made a business out of that.