Large language models like ChatGPT can be beneficial for learning, but caution is necessary to fact-check their answers and avoid relying on incorrect information.
ChatGPT can be used for explaining concepts, practicing languages, generating summaries, clarifying jargon, creating study plans, providing refreshers, and organizing notes, but it is not proficient in math and its abilities are limited to language.
Deep dives
Using chat GPT for learning: Strengths and limitations
Using large language models like chat GPT for learning requires caution. While their conversation abilities may feel human-like, they often provide answers that can be completely wrong, violating our expectation that people don't make up facts. Verbal fluency does not necessarily track with overall intelligence, so treating large language models as highly knowledgeable individuals can backfire. However, chat GPT can be beneficial for tasks like explaining concepts, practicing new languages, generating summaries, dialoguing with long texts, clarifying unfamiliar jargon, creating study plans, and providing refreshers on forgotten tools. Nonetheless, it's important to fact-check the answers, as AI can make mistakes with facts, citations, and math problems.
Ten useful strategies for learning with chat GPT
Readers shared various ways they use chat GPT to learn. Some common strategies include using it as a personal tutor to explain tricky concepts or unfamiliar code, practicing new languages through conversational dialogue, generating summaries of longer texts to navigate information overload, asking questions about scientific papers or longer texts for quick information retrieval, rewriting expert-level text to a more beginner-friendly level, clarifying unfamiliar jargon, creating study plans or agendas, providing refreshers on tools or algorithms, generating flashcards for studying, and organizing notes using embedding features. It's important to review and fact-check the AI-generated content before fully relying on it.
Cautionary tips and limitations when using chat GPT for learning
When using chat GPT, there are some things to be cautious about. First, AI can make up facts or provide incorrect citations, so it's crucial to fact-check and verify information from reliable sources. Additionally, large language models are not proficient in math and may struggle with basic counting tasks, so they might not be reliable for math-related learning, such as providing practice problems or grading answers. It's also important to bear in mind that AI's abilities are narrow and specific to language, and they do not possess the overall reasoning capabilities of humans. Therefore, it's best to use chat GPT for learning in situations where the cost of incorrect answers is minimal, and to understand its limitations.
