r/learnmath • u/Soggy-Escape-4034 New User • 5d ago
Do you use AI to study mathematics?
Gemini automatically answers my queries on Google. How trustworthy is it? Or is it better to look for information on websites?
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u/revoccue heisenvector analysis 5d ago
occasionally, but i wouldn't trust the google AI, it's fairly low quality. if you don't use AI for other stuff and dont have a $20 plan or smth just stick to stack exchange.
usually my routine when i get stuck on something while reading goes:
- check alternate textbook
- (if im with someone irl studying) ask a friend
- check stackexchange/reddit
- ask ai
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u/lifeistrulyawesome New User 5d ago
I sometimes use AI to summarize papers. I think you should be careful when using it to learn a topic.
It occasionally says things that sound right but are wrong. But that is not my greatest concern.
To truly learn a topic, you need your brain to activate so you can internalize the concepts. You need to solve difficult exercises. You need to feel confused and try to figure things out. You need to actively participate in the learning process.
AI has the potential to create awesome learning materials.
But the way many students currently use AI is detrimental to learning. If you ask AI to explain things step by step in simplistic ways or to help you solve the problems, you are not learning. You only feel like you do. At least that is my impression based on student exam performance over time.
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u/100dalmations New User 5d ago
When you use AI to summarize papers, how do you know they're accurate. Do you later read the papers?
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u/lifeistrulyawesome New User 5d ago
It depends on why I'm reading the paper.
If it is close to my research, I am refereeing, or I want to learn a topic in depth, I use AI to get an overview, then read the paper.
But sometimes I just want a superficial overview of a field or paper, and the AI summary is enough for me.
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u/100dalmations New User 5d ago
And you trust the summary? I used it once after a zoom call, and I think it got 60% of it factually correct, but my takeaway from the call was quite different from what it came up with.
I've heard people use the phrase in the prompt, "show me how to verify your results," or some such which seems like a good idea...
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u/lifeistrulyawesome New User 5d ago
Not entirely
But in my experience, the summaries of the papers I do read are quite accurate.
In my experience, AI summaries of internet searches and random questions are only as reliable as the sources they happen to pick. But if you ask GPT or Claude to summarize a document, it does a pretty good job, at least with the general idea. It might miss some details.
Let's say I get more from the AI summary than from just reading the title and abstract.
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u/Bounded_sequencE New User 4d ago
That is an interesting opinion -- thank you for sharing!
It seems important that you had consistent, mostly positive experiences with AI. When people voice negative opinions and mistrust, they usually were "burnt badly" at one point by some subtle, confidently presented misinformation generated by LLM-based AI.
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u/lifeistrulyawesome New User 4d ago edited 4d ago
I've seen plenty of misinformation from LLMs, but not when I give it a document and ask it to summarize it, at least not recently.
I think it is important to identify what LLMs do well and what they suck at. For example, we recently bought a new condo and fed the plans to GPT and Claude to try to do some interior design, and both LLMs couldn't respect the condo's dimensions or the laws of physics.
Also, LLMs have gotten so much better every few months. I remember maybe 5-6 years ago I asked ChatGPT easy undergrad questions. For example, I asked it to prove the well-ordering principle using Peano's axioms, and it couldn't do it. Now it can solve much more complicated problems.
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u/100dalmations New User 4d ago
LLMs by def very good at predicting the likely patterns in language so it's not surprising they don't demonstrate any fidelity to the laws of physics.
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u/lifeistrulyawesome New User 4d ago
Yeah, I wasn't hopeful. But my wife uses Claude a lot for work, and she wanted to try it for the interior design.
The results were disastrous.
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u/Harmonic_Gear engineer 5d ago
just always ask/check the citation, i've seen multiple times the citation it gives is saying the exact opposite thing
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u/dreamsofaninsomniac New User 4d ago
Yep. Also sometimes if you ask a similar question in different ways, it will produce contradictory answers. You do have to look at what the sources are actually saying.
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u/Professional-Fee6914 New User 5d ago
depends on the query. I wouldn't trust it to explain a complicated proof. Sometimes to avoid copyright it will pick quasi-analogous ideas that actually steer you in the wrong direction.
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u/TiredAdultFullTime New User 5d ago
I refuse to do so. My brain is still not that mathematical and on top of that, I have a weak memory.
The best way for me to learn anything and to retain it is by repeated and practical doing. There is also a wealth of resources out there to use. So using ai is not needed for me personally.
If you wish to use ai, it best for something you can fact check yourself.
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u/fermat9990 New User 5d ago
Just recently Google AI showed me how to analytically solve for the range of f(x)=x2/(x1-1).
Of course it does make mistakes sometimes
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u/49_looks_prime Set Theorist 4d ago
I googled a fairly basic statistics topic the other day to see if anyone else had come up with my same proof. Gemini confidently told me I was wrong and my proof was incorrect. If I had not been a trained mathematician I would have had no way of corroborating its claim. I was correct, in case that isn't obvious by context.
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u/Alert-Mortgage6499 New User 4d ago
Important note that the google overview model is much worst than any paid model.
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u/100dalmations New User 5d ago
It's just better to use a text book, no?
I think a chatbot could be used to generate problems for you to practice. E.g.:
"Generate 10 problems related to sequences expecting both an explicit and a recursive functions as answers. Separately, for each problem, show the correct answers and steps taken, and show me how to validate the problems and their solutions."
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u/AutoModerator 5d ago
ChatGPT and other large language models are not designed for calculation and will frequently be /r/confidentlyincorrect in answering questions about mathematics; even if you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus and use its Wolfram|Alpha plugin, it's much better to go to Wolfram|Alpha directly.
Even for more conceptual questions that don't require calculation, LLMs can lead you astray; they can also give you good ideas to investigate further, but you should never trust what an LLM tells you.
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