Turn Anything Into Your Private Course: How I Learn with AI
A large language model isn't just a faster search engine. Used well, it's a tutor on call.
Over the past year, the way I learn new things has been rewritten. There was only one variable: I stopped treating large language models as a search engine and started treating them as a tutor.
The difference is bigger than it sounds.
Search engine vs. tutor
Ask a search engine and you get an answer. Ask a tutor and you get a conversation — it asks you questions back, reaches for examples you’ll understand, and stops where you get stuck.
The key to unlocking this is giving it a role and a constraint:
“You’re my tutor. I want to truly understand the Fourier transform. Don’t hand me the formula yet — explain what it’s doing using an everyday example I’d know, then pause after each step to ask me a question and make sure I’m following before moving on.”
You’ll watch it shift from a parrot into someone who can actually teach.
The three moves I use most
- Distill. Drop in a paper or a video transcript and have it produce a structured outline first. I use that to decide what’s worth a closer read.
- Generate. Have it lay out a learning path from easy to hard based on my goal, then expand each node into a mini-lesson.
- Quiz. When I’m done, have it test me — especially with applied questions of the “would you still know how to use this in a different scenario?” kind.
Distill, generate, quiz — those three steps cover most of the journey from unfamiliar material to knowledge that’s actually yours.
It makes mistakes, and that’s a feature
LLMs will confidently make things up. At first I saw this as a flaw. Later I realized it forced a good habit: I can’t take it on faith — I have to verify for myself.
And verifying with a skeptical eye is itself the most solid kind of learning. Passive reception never beats active questioning.
One caveat
No matter how capable the tool, it can’t think for you. AI can deliver knowledge to your doorstep, but the step of chewing it, swallowing it, and growing it into your own body is yours alone.
A tutor opens the door; the practice is still up to you. In the age of AI, that old line is somehow more true than ever.