Trying to learn in geology about "hydrothermal mineral deposition" (the famous metalliferous ore lodes in Cornwall are such), I went to AI.
My impression is that what happened is significant, and I offer this comment to anyone who needs to learn about a specialisation which is new to them... That "mission" took half a day - after the subject had remained "parked" for more than two years with no way I could find to start making progress on it...
This is "interesting comment", or is so self-evident there was no pupose in expounding this point?
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Point I wish I had made about AI involved in a "tutorial"...
I'm approaching the AI (using "DeepSeek") to ask about geology. The AI has about equal ability in other technical subjects. I am by training a "physical metallurgist" - that various elements are available is a given, and the challenge is to engineer properties of the alloy to meet needs. That comes out of starting in the steel industry. Mining and resource extraction is about "extractive metallurgy". In effect, what gives those elements which the physical metallurgist takes to develop alloys. "Extractive metallurgy" goes from zero up to the interface at which the "physical metallurgist" buys the elements to formulate alloys... I am a scientist already. In this "tutorial" I made a lot of use of hypothesising how the "hydrothermal mineralisation" might work, taking fundamental physical phenomena I know from physical metallurgy. The AI is "knows" the physical metallurgy theory too (along with a vast amount of other subjects and knowledge) and can explain in what ways my conjectures work and in what ways my conjectures deviate from what is. The point is that the learning-rate by this method of conjecturing / hypothesising and offering these for critique is a very fast way of learning - if you have an entity which can respond describing how your conjectures do or do not work. An AI is advantaged by its vast data repository, and ability to relate it to the current "mission". While laid-up with a virus, and keeping very warm to mitigate its symptoms, I spend half a day doing this "learning hydrothermal mineralisation" mission...
What I am saying is that, whatever prior endeavours you have made, the AI is likely to be able to work with those to help you learn about a field of knowledge which is new to you. This relates to a fundamental point which seemingly the majority in society certainly here in Britain "get wrong". This is what I think of as "sideways learning". You can rapidly infill about a "new" topic as far as the furthest extent you have progressed in the subject you have specialised in. "Extent" is how far you have pushed to the out edges of knowledge and started to push into the at-the-time unknown... It follows as a corollary that you should push as far as you can into a specialisation - because you can "infill sideways" to the level of any outward push you have made in some subject you have committed to. Overcoming exhaustion; overcoming challenges; putting in time when you could be off in leisure activities; etc. In Britain "they" look for exact-match - have you done precisely "x" previously? This is actually the incorrect model certainly for technical subjects and I suspect many others.
Anyway - whatever you know already, the AI can help you apply that to understanding a "new" field of knowledge... I hope this is helpful comment.