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should-i-be-using-llms-for-learning.md (1491B)


      1 # Should I Be Using LLMs For Learning?
      2 
      3 I originally considered writing about whether I thought LLMs would 'revolutionize' education, but I was recently reminded how difficult it is to predict the future. An evaluation of the merits of LLMs for education does not lead to a conclusion about the 'revolutionization' of education, and given the investment into AI, along with uncertainty about payoffs, it's even more difficult to predict where such things will invariably lead to. 
      4 
      5 Instead, let's tackles a specific issue, "should you be using LLMs for learning"? I'd like to start this with my personal view on the matter: I would not recommend using LLMs for learning. Without considering the merits of LLMs for learning, there are ethical reasons I would warn against using them for education. Specifically:
      6 
      7 - Support of proprietary software ecosystems / networked software
      8     - Most language models worth learning from would likely be prohibitively expensive to run so one'd use someone else's compute which is functionally proprietary
      9 - Intellectual property theft
     10     - I am not opposed to such things, but many are, so perhaps it's worth considering
     11 - Fear-mongering
     12     - The fear mongering being done by these AI companies about job loss and the ideological push that you'll be 'left behind' are doing societal harm
     13 
     14 # Should I Pay a Tutor
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     16 Also probably not. Seems like they aren't better than step-wise learning https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00461520.2011.611369.