Times are a changin

Isabella is a junior college student at a prestigious university. We talk about how different my experience of going through college is from hers. Well, we mostly talk about her recent experience of studying college in the modern age of LLMs. And it is quite different, indeed, radically different.

Preparing for an exam, the modern way

While studying for an upcoming exam, she has gathered all the teacher’s materials and her lecture notes. She uploads all this and asked the LLM to make a list of the pertinent topics of the subject. This topic list is amended slightly with the list of topics the course material suggests.

Then she prompts the machine to go through each topic, one by one. Provide background information on the subject and create a quiz. This quiz is to test sufficient understanding of the material.

For each topic, she studies the material and takes the test the machine has created. She asks the machine to make sure not to progress to the next topic until she can take the quiz with good enough results. Where necessary, the machine is asked to clarify details and repeat parts that seem unclear.

Automate organizing your study material

She, like most students, has to keep tabs on lots of notes, articles etc. which requires a level of organization not everyone is capable of. I recall having build a crude database system for this purpose, which doubled up as an exercise suitable for grasping the computer science topics at hand.

She, instead, uses a code assistant to automate a workflow where uploaded materials ends up in the cloud. An LLM is then instructed to summarize and categorize the content and find links to other documents, including stuff on topics that are potentially missing from the uploaded content but deemed, by the machine, pertinent. While she is not particularly interested in computer science or software coding, she is able to put together a working system that keeps her study materials in good order.

It’s a machine

What we observe during our conversation, is that because she is interacting, not with another person or group of people, but with an ‘anonymous’ machine, the interaction is not hindered by cultural norms, or any kind of competitive behavior. The machine is available 24/7, never gets tired or bored. It never, thus far, suggests dropping the studying and go to a party or break for food. It is also, apparently, knowledgeable on the subject, at least to the extent a (junior) student requires. The machine allows for a more frank interrogation of knowledge than seems prudent when dealing with other people. Potentially it can deliver a contribution to a far more tailored study program that’s adjusted to what a student wants or needs.

“Depending on the subject, the AI is more suited for a deep, personalized, dive in certain topics than going to office hours with the professor or teacher assistant. If you want to learn, as opposed to wanting to cheat, this AI stuff is great.” concludes Isabella.