[latexr]

At this stage, I can no longer take comparing LLMs to calculators as a good faith argument. That’s a talking point, a framing device, one whose flaws have been explained ad nauseam (as exemplified by the sibling replies), and I’m left questioning either the reasoning abilities or the honesty of those still making it.

They. Are not. The same.

Have you ever known people to commit suicide, kill, or give themselves rare diseases because of their calculators? How about people dating their calculator and going batshit for a software update?

Not to mention learning to do on your own is a useful skill to teach you to think, and an essential skill to (as you suggest) verify answers. People not understanding how things work is exactly why they take bullshit output from an LLM as gospel.

I also note that such arguments tend to be profoundly selfish and self-centred. Your anecdote happened to have an outcome you enjoyed and benefitted from, but I bet that wasn’t the reality for all your colleagues. Just like you are glad for the calculators in your class, some other student may be glad for the lack of them in theirs and it may be the reason they got into their field of study.