I’m interested in using ChatGPT to learn about new subjects. I know I can’t entirely count on the accuracy and information provided from ChatGPT but I’m curious what strategies people have found to learn as effectively as possible given the state of the tool.
Here are a few questions I have for the community. Please feel free to answer any of them:
Has anyone found success increasing their “learning productivity”?
How do you formulate a lesson plan for yourself?
What kinds of questions do you ask, in general, when digging into a subject?
Are there any types of prompts you find yourself using often?
How do you make ChatGPT work for your style of learning?
In my opinion the main thing yo always remember when interacting with LLMs is that they are reasoning machines not knowledge bases. That doesn’t mean an LLM cannot tell you facts, but it does mean that not rarely these facts will be hallucinations.
When learning with LLM’s I personally tend to use them to help me understand how to reason about the subject and which questions to ask. And then go research these questions outside.
I’ve developed plugins for learning with ChatGPT, I call these “AI Learning Companion (AILC)”. The first one is in history the second in chemistry and some biology.
I’m converting them to GPTs.
more at https://warmersun.com
I usually ask it to explain a concept to me in detail. Then I have it reword to a 9th grader reading level, which simplifies it. If I still can’t get it sometimes I’ll even say to explain it to me as a fifth grader. I used this method to better understand how language models work.
I believe this is becoming more of a new art-form than just retaining the data and reading unique text formats on a screen.
I’m willing to bet everything I have that this will become more than just “learning” over the years. Like a new sub-culture and higher form of completionism towards anything you want to do.
But I might be way to optimistic about it, who knows only time will tell.
I think it has to do with a prompt’s ability to inspire the connection between concepts or domains that have not yet been explored. Each person has their unique perspective that give an impetus to connect new dots in news ways. Super excited to see what the first generation of AI leaders will create!
Yes, for basic things. For more advanced subjects (or sensitive ones), be very very careful. ChatGPT has the inclination to produce hallucinations (which they don’t write it as disclaimer anymore below). ChatGPT also has much more the tendency for politically correct, “equally” represented answers that refuse to answer or provide answers for something that it “feels” does not fit with their user guidelines.
You can basically create your own lesson plan for yourself. ChatGPT can definitely help with you in this aspect.
Anything, from surface-deep to in-depth questions, which sometimes ChatGPT refuses to answer due to their inherent biases and political correctness. (especially pertaining to certain ideologies that I cannot disclose here)
Just follow your heart, it will fix itself. ChatGPT has inherent “auto-fix” in their system.
It does not really work without tinkering/editing. I don’t think I can learn some in-depth subjects with chatGPT without it starts “lecturing” me about their morality from its moral high ground and how I should represent my data carefully etc etc and even lecturing me about ethics that I already knew when it comes to research etc. It just wasted so much time and resources with their blabbering etc etc (I already know about it)
It seems that their content guideline makers have succesfully made ChatGPT into their pets.
Anyhow, I can see drastic degradation in their outputs as well as occassional errors.
re: lesson plan
I sometimes ask AILC (AI Learning Companion GPT) to give me a list of bullet points for the main things I should know about for the given topic, e.g. in order to pass a high school exam.
re: hallucinations
The API endpoints in AILC are designed to return visuals - maps, timeline diagrams, other diagrams, image collage etc. -as well as a list of facts in JSON from a curated data set, thereby helping with “grounding”
re: questions
just going down the rabbit holes, I (as the learner) ask questions about things that are surprising or non-trivial
e.g. in History it’s OK that Genghis Khan became the leader of the Mongols but how exactly does someone go from slave in captivity to the ruler of all tribes?
re: prompts
I am still tweaking the initial instructions as it seems to me custom GPTs don’t fully, 100% follow every instruction
I am asking AILC to always include a visual and to always add a story element to the answer. the stry should follow the SUCCESS formula from the book Made to Stick
yes, you can easily use it for study, especially if you have base material, thus using the function of reading files and data analysis, I also see value in language learning, and, with some fine-tuning through GPTs, even pronunciation correction and conversation assistance. The prompts are interesting too, and, if you are going to carry out research on the internet, doing so through gpt 4 can be a great strategy for saving time and gaining productivity in your studies.
Of course, you can’t study mathematics or physics, but finding out about different topics and having some technical knowledge is very relevant.
Finally, I agree with my colleague who says that it is much more of a way of understanding reasoning, which is why uploading files with base material and asking for syntheses or exploring them in other ways can be very interesting, success!
We can experiment with different approaches to make ChatGPT work for your learning style. For example, you can provide clear instructions and specific questions to get focused responses. You can also ask for explanations or elaborations on particular topics, request examples or case studies, or seek advice on effective learning strategies. Additionally, engaging in a dialogue with ChatGPT and actively reflecting on the responses can enhance your learning experience.