May I ask why? If by "not the same" you meant: AI is not at the level of a good human educator, it is a fair argument - but not many humans can afford to have a one-to-one human educator either.
Perhaps I am a bit more optimistic, but if AI could give me, let's say, 90% of an average lecturer's capability, at 10% of the price or even less, that is probably extremely valuable. (For one, I would certainly be interested in learning new things that otherwise wouldn't make sense financially)
Moreover, there are areas of expertise that are very hard to reach without special help. I have a PhD in computer science. Earning that degree was a major time commitment, and it gave me close contact with one of the few experts in a niche area. I absolutely loved the experience.
But I did not learn everything I wanted to know. And I can’t afford to take a time-out to go to grad school again for a second PhD. On the other hand, an LLM, in some sense, has access to the world’s knowledge. With some patience and persistence, you can mine almost-expert-level instruction from one.
When ChatGPT 3.5 came out, I excitedly tried this for a topic that I WAS an expert in. The results were discouraging. The model’s answers seemed to reflect the general misunderstandings that people had about the topic. More recently though, I had to review a paper in the same area, and I used a late-model ChatGPT to help check my work. It was an eye-opening experience because it was no longer confused. And it found longstanding misunderstandings I had, buttressing its answers against my skepticism with citations to original work. I came away very impressed. This kind of AI “rubber duck programming” is my preferred style of use now. I used it just today to help me learn an area of statistics I have always been fuzzy about. This approach definitely requires some careful prompting, but I am optimistic that AI tutors will one day be a real thing. My only worry is that people lose the ability to understand what makes an answer a good one and why we should care about good answers.
>And it found longstanding misunderstandings I had, buttressing its answers against my skepticism with citations to original work.
Did you check those citations to make sure they actually contained the information they were being cited for? Because I've asked difficult questions too and have had mixed results. I would never trust an LLM as a teacher. They make stuff up all the time, and when you're learning you're in the very worst position to be checking the information you're given.
A lot of knowledge in such niches has never been written down. Papers don't contain it. Tacit knowledge, it's in unpublished config files and unpublished experiments that some prof or PhD student remembers, all the things that are not "publishing-worthy" (because not flashy, not novel-sounding enough, or a negative result etc) but crucial for the method to actually work. Most of expertise is like this and this is why spending years in a research group, talking to the researchers, participating in their culture, understanding their thinking over years (or even just months) can be invaluable. There are also many things that people only say after a beer, after you know each other well. Claude and ChatGPT haven't ingested any of this. They ingested the sanitized surface version, the press release / advertisement version. Because papers are basically career marketing and advertisement mostly. The real expertise is guarded and hidden.
This is of course about the PhD level and beyond. For regular university-level education, where the goal is to pass the usual exams, ChatGPT and Claude are more than enough. But for real-world "doing", not (yet).
I just fundamentally believe that AI cannot replace the human aspect of connection. A teacher does more than just teach, they also connect with the students and form relationships. You could argue we may end up with some form of “AI” connection though if that’s a good thing and what is its long term effects on us as a society we are yet to see. Regardless, what I mean to say is I don’t think AI to Human can replace Human to Human as a whole, that’s my point. The marketing copy feels deceptive and not something that speaks to me, I wouldn’t consider that to be same. This feels like it’s marketed towards MOOCs but I am not a fan of education as a product like that either, I come from a place where education is free and this idea of gatekeeping knowledge and forming products around it just doesn’t sit well with me. This just feels like a way to make more money and marketed towards that narrative. You’re right it lowers the cost, but at what cost? MOOCs already didn’t accomplish much the way I see it, I saw much better results from self made paths with things like YouTube or free lectures and/or self made teachers who go above and beyond. That said, I think there is a role for AI in education and I do think it belongs in there, alongside a human educator, in some form.
I didn't have "replace" in my mind. I 100% agree with you that AI cannot replace human educators, but I am hopeful that as a supplementary tool, AI can achieve a lot.
On your point of MOOCs and YouTube lectures: I agree that the latter is sufficient for me, but there's nothing stopping AI from creating something similar, or even better: lectures tailored to my specific interests and needs. MOOC failed for me exactly because it wasn't "for me" - I might as well try and find a YouTube playlist.
These are all tangential, of course. I don't know how this specific thing would turn out.
I believe if you need a human tutor to understand category theory or Lean then you don't have the requiste math/CS background, and a human/LLM tutor won't be able to meaningfully teach you anything.
Note I said "meaningfully" - something with LLMs that deeply concerns me is that they provide edutainment, and people actually think they're learning something. One of the comments on this thread mentioned giving a "dense linear algebra pdf" and having an LLM use the Socratic method. I guarantee they would have learned more if they read the PDF. I strongly doubt they learned anything at all with a bunch of silly "Socratic" questions about linear algebra. But it felt like they learned something!
" if you need a human tutor to understand category theory or Lean then you don't have the requiste math/CS background and a human/LLM tutor won't be able to meaningfully teach you anything."
No, it's an honest thing to say. If you're not able to read a graduate-level textbook and teach yourself category theory then you don't have the mathematical maturity to understand category theory. You need to start smaller: ideally abstract algebra and point-set topology, or set theory and mathematical logic if you just want the CS applications. Likewise with Lean. Of course there is a place for a good human instructor. But mathematical maturity must be developed the hard way.
Perhaps I am a bit more optimistic, but if AI could give me, let's say, 90% of an average lecturer's capability, at 10% of the price or even less, that is probably extremely valuable. (For one, I would certainly be interested in learning new things that otherwise wouldn't make sense financially)