I’ll second this.
It really shines when learning new technologies in a field in which you already have some expertise. Being able to apply the smell test, or quickly validate the output is important.
I haven’t tested this, but I would imagine the type of information you’re requesting dictates the quality of response you’ll get. In my case I use it mainly as interactive documentation for different tooling. Asking it to explain the process for synthesizing new hypothetical polymers likely will not yield useful results.
It’s worth noting that my experiences are with GPT 4.
I've been using it a lot while working through two very math-y books right now - Princeton's Companion to Mathematics and Data-Driven Science and Engineering. To your point, I have some background in undergraduate level mostly applied math, but there are a lot of things where I don't understand the argument or immediately have an intuition for what's going on, and I've found gpt-4 to be actually really helpful with that. Sometimes it is wrong, but it can't totally BS me, because I'm sitting there looking at the correct equations and proofs, so if it's wrong I always know what's right. But a lot of times it really helps me with intuitions on things that if I was purely just self-learning, outside a class with a professor and TA, I'd probably just accept the poorer level of understanding and move on, instead of investing the time in trying to find what I'm looking for on the internet.
I haven’t tested this, but I would imagine the type of information you’re requesting dictates the quality of response you’ll get. In my case I use it mainly as interactive documentation for different tooling. Asking it to explain the process for synthesizing new hypothetical polymers likely will not yield useful results.
It’s worth noting that my experiences are with GPT 4.