Respectfully, I disagree. I think there's absolutely a case for AI being encouraged in younger people, and there's room for these tools. I've been leaning on LLMs for side learning in side projects, and it has concretely helped me with conceptual questions about math and Vulkan as I've been trying to learn some graphics basics with side projects.

I would grant: I was not the most studious kid, I could definitely stand to learn how to read code a lot more effectively than I do; but I have found being able to ask a computer, "what portions of the Vulkan Programming Guide are less relevant with Vulkan's design changes since the release" pointing me to the dynamic rendering extensions and placing it into context, with inline code and links out to useful blog posts for additional reading, that sort of thing is very helpful.

Working on a prototype before I was trying to learn Vulkan, I was using it to explore SDL_GPU's API which definitely had some gaps in its documentation. Granted again, I could have referenced the sample code - I am sure you'll prefer I'd have done that - but it helped to get information about what each piece of the API was doing, and gave reasonable results that made sense and did inform me enough to understand what I was doing, turning much of that into an interactive learning of basic GPU programming for graphics. Where the AI hallucinated, it was often on things like method names, which I was able to read through and find the methods it was intending to name. (This only occurred once or twice when I was learning).

Unrelated, but adding the C macro syntax and nesting macros, which I could have an LLM explain inline and link the GNU manual. Never got that taught to me in a C course. Man, computers are complicated!

These have not replaced textbooks; I have been using them alongside textbooks and handwriting code for practice, and they work as a very good complement. I also sometimes use them to unblock me - I don't know CMake very well and lean on AI to do CMake, so I can focus on learning C++ and graphics, which is my primary objective right now.

I would add too, I have for fun given it prompts about various topics I learned in university, and I often will get answers that are bang-on what I learned in university undergraduate courses - the topics I tried were welfare state taxonomies, distributed systems, disk storage performance, filesystem layouts and internals.

Boy, this would've been cool for me as a kid. There's just so much information right there, and pointing you to topics and textbooks a couple questions away, I wish I had these tools. I was a curious kid in a terrible MAGA-esque family that was deeply uncurious about the world, had no knowledge of any advanced subject and basically mocked me for trying to learn more about stuff. And you go to the school library and it's all kids shit, not even an option to try and reach out for more. Now smart kids might be able to go just learn shit very freely and be pointed to textbooks, and go pirate them off some Russian site, and start learning and go tutor themselves, as I'm doing today as an adult.

At least knowing myself and knowing if there's another kid like me, I think they would deeply enjoy having a natural language encyclopedia, if we can get it as close to that as possible. I think even with some error inherent, if the tools can be often and directionally correct, that would be a plus. I went to university, and the professors there hallucinated some things so embarrassing it should bar them from teaching, for the standards people hold LLMs to! i.e., sanitizing conspiracy theories that Android records all language through the microphone therefore iOS is better, Apple Silicon is more battery efficient because it is RISC and not CISC. Got a terrible history of computer graphics technology you'd know was slanted if you watch the 8 Bit Guy on YouTube. Rubbish.

The thing that worries me, and what this article really talks about, are the kids that just don't give a shit. They are not new - when I went to high school, before AI, stupid kids would copy code off the internet. I think AI probably makes it worse because it makes it harder to call out and enforce against it, and agreed, that should be stopped. But to me, that is mainly a cultural problem. Too many Americans are completely uncurious and just spout garbage; there are a lot of kids who grow up in that cesspool and are going to grow up uncurious, and then AI acts as a shortcut rather than a vehicle of curiosity.

And granted, maybe AI is less useful when you are in a structured environment - but the structured environment has its downsides. Even in that environment many of the TAs were clueless and unhelpful, or just too damn busy or already too knowledgeable to meet students where they were at. Again, talk about hallucinations with TAs! Many times in my experience. And that's all to say nothing about getting people to not just do homework but actually go get curious about things and try stuff that isn't required of them.

I think there will be some culture that remains curious, and has these tools, will come to grips with where they can help, where they go wrong, how to balance it with other learning methods; and I think they are going to have kids that absorb a lot more knowledge and get to play with topics and learn things, faster, to each kids' interest, perhaps even individualized tutoring at better scale - I hope that is possible.

I hope the United States as well, but maybe not, because holy cow our culture and attitudes are plainly terrible these days. Your comment is pretty representative of how most people react if I suggest this or talk about my own experiences I'm describing here. But I hope at least I'm arguing something comprehensive here. There is too little conversation beyond hyperbolic nonsense on the internet; I consider "FUTURE LUDDITE" etc. to be in that realm.

Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes