Feynman Technique is famously attributed to American Physicist Richard Feynman. He’s known by a quote “if you cannot explain a concept in simple language, you do not understand it”.
From that sentence, a learning technique was born and popularized and it boils down to something like:
- Write down anything you have about certain theme
- Explain it to someone, in very simple terms (like they are a child).
- Revisit your gaps in explanation and refine your understanding.
It is a powerful learning technique that highlights clear thoughts, simple communication and is said to be very effective for any new knowledge. I’m trying to use it and will let you know how it goes.
Trying to make sense out of AI projects that are useful for me, I thought - how could LLMs be in this in a helpful assistance? Then I realized something to be very worried about - and why our learning is broken.
The AI Driven Learning era: We as children - machines as tutors.#
Wenever we consult AI models, we are in the role of the child, and the AI is in the role of the learner.
- AI tries to explain things in simple terms, for us, ignorant humans.
- It is able to identify gaps based on our simple questions, and adapt to serve we better.
- For some cases, it learns permanently and adapt based on this.
In summary: if we blindly ask AIs anything, we are becoming increasingly dumber and the AIs are actually learning and adapting more than us.
We are missing the process of doing, fixing our mistakes, knowing why we need to fix, and by being successful doing it. Is this very self-improvement process and reward that makes us motivated.
Conclusion: how an AI product could truly help us in the learning process#
I close this post with a challenge and a possible birth of a project for myself: A tiny LLM product capable of helping effectively on someone’s learning.
For me it’s interesting to notice that actually LLMs can be pretty useful to be like a child or a naive person in the field:
- Needs simple and clear explanations
- Can make some associations and intuitions but limited in a level of reasoning
- Usually accepts the experiences of the adult (as we human being the adults, right?).
So my focus will be simply creating a tool that inverts the relationship and make the human take ownership on producing and learning from it, instead of the AI. The AI will just ask simple questions.
Stay tuned...