#1 Updated April 6, 2026

Self-guided learning with AI

Use AI to build a study plan, ask better questions while reading, and keep the exchange candid rather than agreeable.

Pick a topic you want to learn. Tell the AI your background, available time, and what you want to understand. Ask it to build a study plan — readings, key ideas, and an order to work through them. As you read, use the AI to ask questions, check your understanding, and explore connections. What used to take days of searching now takes hours.

Also worth setting: AI chatbots trained with RLHF tend to be sycophantic — defaulting to agreement rather than honest critique. Counterproductive when you are trying to learn. In Claude, go to Settings → General → "What personal preferences should Claude consider in responses?" and add:

Be direct and honest. Don't default to agreement
or flattery: I prefer candid feedback, especially
on my research.

This overrides the default tendency at the preference level, so every conversation starts candid rather than agreeable.

The self-guided learning idea comes from a post by Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, who used AI to design a self-guided study of sociologist Erving Goffman — and found the experience comparable to a master's-level course week.