> it's not uncommon to have some little misunderstanding that just isn't covered by a written explanation because it's "obvious" unless you happen to have misunderstood it that particular way... LLMs are genuinely good at challenges like this
For undergrad math, sure, and again, I think it's often because on some random corner of the internet someone else had a very similar misunderstanding. On the other hand, when I ask for clarifications on niche topics that have few examples on the internet LLMs (even Opus 5) often confidently cite irrelevant papers / results or simply hallucinate.
I think you're desperate to think that LLMs cannot make any sort of deduction by themselves: they must have just remembered someone else doing it. But I've definitely had conversations where they've had insights that can't be explained by that. Yes, I've had plenty of hallucinations too, but it's worth it, for me at least, overall.
Having said that, I wouldn't attempt to learn a whole topic with an LLM, that would be frustrating.
For undergrad math, sure, and again, I think it's often because on some random corner of the internet someone else had a very similar misunderstanding. On the other hand, when I ask for clarifications on niche topics that have few examples on the internet LLMs (even Opus 5) often confidently cite irrelevant papers / results or simply hallucinate.