How to use AI to augment learning without losing critical thinking skills?

Lately I have been using AI more in my day to day learning. I typically use it to generate boilerplate code, ask it to explain some concept I’m having trouble grasping in an easier way and fact checking what it says while asking for deeper clarification (why is something done this way, what are others ways it can be done, comparing and contrasting etc. I basically use it as a tutor. I don’t use it to really “do” anything for me. I program most everything by hand and anything that has to do with problem solving I do myself.

But I won’t lie and say I’m not scared of becoming reliant on AI. I think the way I’m using it is pretty good. Improve learning while continue to apply knowledge myself. But I’d like to know where I can improve my AI usage and how you guys are using AI in your workflow. It’s giving me a great deal of anxiety when I read articles about how AI will kill critical thinking skills and what not. I don’t want to avoid it. But I don’t want it to make me stupid.

9 points | by mintsuku 6 hours ago

6 comments

  • erelong 50 minutes ago
    Kind of funny sounding, but you could ask AI some tips on how to do this...

    I think naturally some output from AI will be incorrect and this forces people to question the output constantly, so I'm not sure if there is much actual current risk of such a loss of skills

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    • bar000n 5 minutes ago
      This if you do have some critical thinking to start with, for the less gifted ones LLMs only make things worse.
  • turtleyacht 2 hours ago
    Introduce friction. Use it only through an API, and replies are emailed after a day. Have it refuse to answer questions missing a minimal repro case. Let it chasten you if the same question was asked before (within a year or month).

    Request quizzes or hints before showing the answer. Have it go through a Socratic dialog style, where you can reply, "Figured it out" to abort.

  • Meuble_ancien 1 hour ago
    Spending time facing a problem and having no idea how to solve it is an incompressible time in the process of learning/understanding something. So I think it could be: 1) forcing yourself to think without any help, 2) asking AI after some time if no solution comes up to you (and there is a certain time constraint to deliver), 3) understanding perfectly the AI produced solution, no matter the time it takes.
  • ofalkaed 4 hours ago
    I use it to explain and explore things I don't understand and I will have it give me code examples in multiple languages, explain the benefits and differences which each language offers for the task, and ask questions about each. I stick to the ChatGPT free plan and when I hit the usage limit for the top model, I close the window and switch to writing code. by the time my limit resets I will have much better and more focused questions to ask but generally I wait until I have a real reason to go back, bang my head against the problem for awhile.

    I have found that it is much better at answering questions if you start with code it wrote instead your own code or someone else's code, so I boil my question down to a simple programming task and start by having it write that code. For example, there were some things I was unsure about with VMs/bytecode interpreters/compilers, so I started my session by asking ChatGPT to write me a simple Forth VM in C and then used that as the jumping off point.

  • v7engine 5 hours ago
    I believe people will lose their critical thinking skills, when they use AI blindly. May be we should write the code for a requirement, and then ask the AI to review and suggest any optimizations, so that we could probably learn the mistakes we make.
  • chistev 4 hours ago
    Technology gives and technology takes.