> a certain degree of "productive struggle" is essential
Honestly, I'm not sure this would account for most of the difficulty in learning. In my experience most of the difficulty involved in learning something involved a few missing pieces of insight. It often took longer to understand the few missing pieces than the rest of the topic. If they are accurate enough, LLMs are great for getting yourself unstuck and keep yourself moving. Although it has always been a part of the learning experience, I'm not sure frantically looking through hundreds of explanations for a missing detail is a better use of one's time than to dig deeper in the time you save.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I wonder if this "missing piece of insight" is at least sometimes an illusion, as in the "monads are like burritos" fallacy [0]. Of course this does not apply if there really is just a missing fact that too many explanations glossed over.
I once knew someone who studied CS and medicine at the same time. According to them, if you didn't understand something in CS after reasonable effort, you should do something else and try again next semester. But if you didn't understand something in medicine, you just had to work harder. Sometimes it's enough that you have the right insights and cognitive tools. And sometimes you have to be familiar with the big picture, the details, and everything in between.
ideally you look and fail and exhaust your own efforts, then get unblocked with a tool or assistant or expert. With LLMs at your finger tips who has both the grit to struggle and the self discipline not to quit early? at the age of the typical student - very few.
That actually is an approach. Some teachers make you read the lesson before class, others give you homework on the lesson before lecturing it, and some even quiz you on it on top of that before allowing you to ask questions. I personal feel that trying to learn the material before class helped me learn the material better than coming into class blind.
one could argue aswell that having at least generally satisfying, but at the same time omnipresent "expert assistance" might rather end up empowering you.
Feeling confident to be able to shrug off blockers, that might otherwise turn exploration into a painful egg hunt for trivial unknowns, can easily mean the difference between learning and abandoning.
Honestly, I'm not sure this would account for most of the difficulty in learning. In my experience most of the difficulty involved in learning something involved a few missing pieces of insight. It often took longer to understand the few missing pieces than the rest of the topic. If they are accurate enough, LLMs are great for getting yourself unstuck and keep yourself moving. Although it has always been a part of the learning experience, I'm not sure frantically looking through hundreds of explanations for a missing detail is a better use of one's time than to dig deeper in the time you save.