I literally just started playing around with Lathe (https://github.com/devenjarvis/lathe) which was shared here on HN a few weeks back. There are some things I have been wanting to learn more about (some for work, some for personal desire), and I used it to generate a tutorial about some of the things.

I have been very pleased with the results so far. I was able to tune the tutorial to exactly what I want to learn, and it did a very good job (at least that i have seen so far). It has made learning fun, since I get to learn exactly what I want, and I can ask the AI questions and have it make changes to the tutorial in real time as i am working through it.

Now, will I keep using this at a rate to fully offset all of the thinking i have stopped doing since i started using AI? I am not sure, I guess time will tell.

Yea, this is a serious problem but honestly it was present before LLMs. Actually knowing, deeply, how to do something was always very difficult and very time consuming. People would substitute it with “edutainment”: youtube videos, Ted Talks, blogs, etc. The thing is nobody was really learning deeply. We were training our brains for recognition, but mastery requires training for generation which was always the harder of the 2 cognitive processes.

"[Learning] new sports" strikes me as an especially odd one. I can see how an AI tool could help to learn the theory or perhaps come up with better training or match-day/racing strategies, but it won't short-cut the work of developing the necessary physical skills, will it?

I'm using it to learn coding.

i could not get through the hurdles of installing an IDE and js/python modules before.

now i am learning basic scripting and data modeling etc.

it is phenomenal for learning languages.

i built a chicken coop and some furniture. the skills and confidence i gained are real. am i failing to learn certain skills in the process? of course. but I'm getting further then i would on my own, and that is truly meaningful.

you can keep dismissing it; but I'm genuinely using it to break down barriers, give me confidence, and highlight my ignorance in very productive ways.

i find it bizarre how unwilling some people are to recognize that.

It's kinda easy to measure if you've learned something. You can test yourself if you can do what you've learned without AI.

i'm using LLMs to do personal aspnet web project. i'm not skill in javascript. i let AI handle it and learn.

I agree with the sentiment of the parent comment. But I also sometimes question what you have posed exactly. Am I really learning or getting the curiosity itch scratched. The line is very thin sometimes. But I think I am more in the camp of learning. I can ask so dumb question that I never had the courage to ask nor were they entertained where I was educated. It has been a boon to finally ask.

For example I am following Dirac's book "The Principles of quantum mechanics" to study QM. Pre-AI wouldn't have been able to do so, I am just that dumb. Even with AI its tough. but the thing is I can keep asking questions until I get that concept drilled in. Now I am doing it at a pace that's unfathomable to me.

But now that I am getting to grips with QM, I can get to things that I am really interested to learn like spin resonance and so on. This is something I am so grateful for.

Now it can be questioned that is it making me wise, intelligent or just "giving me answers" that I should strive to discover myself. I dont know the answer to that. But studying what I want, how I want and not getting judged is something i deeply enjoy. Srry the comment might have taken some tangents.

>You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing.

You can have it write a program that generates drills for you.

I wanted to become better at reading sheet music so I generated a sheet music reading program. You can have it generate maths drills, then ask questions about it if you get stuck or whatever. If you genuinely want to get better at something then AI will help you learn it faster. Obviously its going to hamper more people's cognitive ability that it will enhance but that is a separate problem.

I'm learning by doing things.

For example: AI has helped me get into restoring retro tech, specifically resoldering leaky caps on retro Macintosh logic boards. Before AI, I didn't know how to use a multimeter (I knew theoretically how it worked), I didn't know how to use flux, solder wick, heat gun. I also didn't understand how bromine radicals yellowed plastic and how to reverse it by using blue light similar to what they use for indoor aquariums.

So AI unlocked doing for me.

When did I say I wasn't doing and just reading. That is your own heavy bias creeping in.

Learning by doing is often more effective because it naturally involves forced recall.

But it's not the only way to learn and not even the only way to do a lot of forced recall.

It's downright crazy to say you aren't learning anything by reading. You likely won't retain that high a % of the content without repeated drilling, but it's not like nonfiction exists for no reason!

This.

Without doing you may as well read some fiction. The result is mostly the same.

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Ive crafted LLMs to create drills and practice exams etc. Im not just reading about new sport activities, or videography/photography or linear algebra or physics. I'm putting it into action. As I said above, technology is a lever. Maybe you are just reading stuff and not drilling problems. That isnt me.

You really just need to augment with tight prompting and know how to extract information and links to peer reviewed literature and well sourced information. Once again, technology here is a lever. Separating wheat from chaff has been key in academic and information pursuits forever and it is becoming ever more important.

If you’re cognizant of the sycophancy and not a total narcissist then it’s not too hard to figure out with a little experience when the models are just trying to hype you up

You've described school. You get told about things and given a hammer to leverage what you've been told.

An LLM absolutely shortens the research part of learning. If I had a human of who had a moderate level of skill who would endlessly answer all my questions, the result would be the same.

You might have a point when it comes to software development because the AI can tell you things but it also just do them for you, at which point, you've learned a lot less. But for non-software things I have to learn things so I can then go and do them.

But even for software development, I've learned a lot of esoteric crap to get interop working on projects that I will probably quickly forget just the same as when I had to spend hours skimming through stackoverflow.

Time helps to some degree, but I've worked with professionals who've earned a living for 30+ years, enjoy strong reputations among their peers, and who absolutely do not know what they're doing.

recently vibe-coded a personalized skateboarding block-training app. The platform maps curated YouTube tutorials to specific tricks I want to learn, logs my daily progress, and tracks failure rates alongside the specific reasons for missed attempts.It also functions as a structured video journal that integrates seamlessly into my coaching routine. For instance, during a session of 10 daily kickflip attempts, the app logs my success metrics and video capture so my coach can review my exact mechanics. Over time, this data-driven feedback loop visualizes my progression curve and systematically improves my landing consistency.

In another case I follow a bodybuilding cutting regimen and it helps me create and track recipes consistent with my diet plan and macro guidelines. It helps me also create tasty recipes that fit my criteria based on the ingredients I have on hand.

Those are just 2 examples.

I also recently built a backyard jib setup with a platform, ramp, PVC jib rail for snowboarding, and it helped me architect the design for it.

Yeah, it is like going to a restaurant to taste a foreign meal rather than looking up how to cook that foreign meal yourself, cooking it and that way getting to experience it.