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How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

https://laurentiugabriel.github.io/blog/articles/how-i-use-llms-to-learn/
64•laurentiurad•51m ago

Comments

ventana•43m ago
The title is not representing what the post is about. “Use LLM to learn complex topics” here actually means that the author asks an agent to describe the problem area, and then implement a simple web-based simulation game, and by playing that game, the author actually learns about the topic and its constraints. They use chip making as an example.

That's actually a fun way to learn processes!

laurentiurad•41m ago
Thanks! The original title was "How I use LLMs to learn...", but somehow HN removed the "How" part. I even removed the initial post thinking it was a typo on my end and tried to post again, but I stumbled upon the same behavior.
Anon84•40m ago
HN likes to remove “How” and “Why” from titles. You need to edit them back right after you post it
lacedeconstruct•33m ago
Its fun but is it really effective ? I mean I checked the LLM one and I came out more confused about a topic I already know about, I find the best way to to learn using LLMs is to just generate an example try to somewhat get a mental model of how it works and then ground my understanding with traditional documentation and resources, its an iteration of a technique I used to do in college where I would read the textbook questions first to understand what is important and then read the chapter
sixtyj•19m ago
Game-based learning, described by Comenius, works if someone else prepares “a game” for you. E.g. like a dungeon master. :)

Otherwise you probably get more confused as you have mentioned.

On the other side, Peter Diamandis describes a situation where a bunch of kids were given a internet-connected computer and they had no teacher. Instead of it there was a “grandma” that checked kids from time to time.

After that there was a knowledge test that revealed “no teacher” approach was more efficient.

But it was a group, not an individual activity…

ventana•19m ago
I assume different ways of learning work for different people. For me personally, it's taking a piece of paper and drawing the diagram of how things work together; of if it's some math, then, again, using the pen and paper to follow the text. I can very much accept that for some people playing the simulation is a good way to touch the new problem space. I can easily imagine that for some topics, let's say, traffic signal automation, a careful simulation game will probably give more information than reading papers or manuals.
aswegs8•41m ago
I mean, yeah, fun project. But that whole game could be like 15 mins of prompting.
IshKebab•34m ago
> What you get is a beautiful animation that is 100% accurate and free of hallucinations.

How do you know if you're learning this for the first time? Very risky to learn from LLMs. I've done it, but you have to keep your wits about you. Lots of "oh of course you're right - what I just told you was completely wrong".

rickcarlino•32m ago
I’ve been using LLMs to create readable rewrites of RFCs and specs that interest me. It is not precise enough for implementation use, but it has increased my understanding of the underlying RFC.

Another useful approach has been asking Codex to implement complex things, like a Kademlia DHT or BitTorrent client in a literate style with the explicit purpose to increase understanding by reviewing the source code.

Examples: https://rickcarlino.com/notes/note-dump-and-ai-summaries/ind...

https://github.com/RickCarlino/tiny-bt

dcreater•32m ago
YouTube has so many truly wonderful videos on chip production. I admire your approach but it seems like a lot of people are in this ai maxxing phase where they reach for ai for everything despite their being ready, high quality things already available for free
AlotOfReading•21m ago
I'm also not sure you can really learn chip production from widely available public information. It's a hugely complex industry where the details tend to shape larger strategies. For example, you can't really understand the relationship between Micron and TSMC without some awareness of the trade-offs of memory processes for peripheral transistors.
tayo42•9m ago
YouTube is just a big dump of information. Having a structured way to learning along with interacting helps you learn. Otherwise you're just binging information
spacedcowboy•25m ago
Another, possibly easier, way is to ask an LLM to give you a quiz on a topic, and then discuss your answers with it.

Surprisingly effective.

chasd00•6m ago
I had an internal company certification I needed to pass before end of our fiscal year. The study material consisted of 10 ppt decks about 80 slides each (so around 800 total). I had an AI read all the decks and compose a study guide with quizzes along the way. It came up with a 100page word doc that I used in place of the decks to prepare. It worked very well for this including, like you said, quizzing me over various sections.

(Yes I confirmed it was ok to use AI with the material)

user-•20m ago
The little tool it outputted is nice, but click around the stages and the text is not high quality at all. The snippy titles, abbrievated explanations, I wish a few more iterations and thought was put into the actual main textual content. Especially for 'complex' stuff
dwa3592•20m ago
i looked at the animations, they look cool, and i don't think i will enjoy learning things that way. as someone else said, there's a lot of content already produced on these topics. i also think the level at which these animations are playing, they are actually hiding the 'complexity' of these topics.
latent-l•19m ago
Very cool, I like the visual learning nature of this and the auto play once starting. The game graphics are engaging which counts for a lot these days, I feel my attention span suffering after using agents for the past year.

I've been working on a similar process of pushing to github pages, but focused more on having "practice sessions" with coding blocks to test content. Using webassembly and mock servers to mock backend endpoints Here's one I built to build a full stack llm chat system in the browser.

https://model-systems-labs.github.io/latent/llm-systems/less...

ultra_nick•17m ago
Oh, I do similar, but using single page websites.

Last month, I read The Prince and had it make a text adventure campaign for me.

For a lot of other topics, I often just ask it to create a simple python example that I can run.

fosterfriends•13m ago
I love this idea!
brcmthrowaway•13m ago
His other project, https://aivestor.tech/, seems like a huge grift.
fosterfriends•13m ago
Is there a way we could turn this into a reusable skill?
f311a•10m ago
What’s everyone’s opinion on learning new tech things in this day and age? My opinion swings between positive and depressing vision of the future.

I still learn new stuff, but I’m afraid it won’t have any value in a year or so.

For example, I’m pretty good at optimizing low level stuff, but right now you can just ask LLMs to do so and they are pretty good at it. They will profile the code and suggest reasonable options like 90% of the time.

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