Isaac Asimov's "Profession"
Posted by ColinWright 11 hours ago
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Comment by ColinWright 11 hours ago
I've been reminded of this because of the recent discussion about the use of "AI" in mathematics. The protagonist complains about having to acquire knowledge in dribs and drabs, learning slowly and painfully, while everyone else gets the knowledge effectively "for free".
The Wikipedia article also says:
"The novella inspired a research paper investigating whether people would choose to take a magic learning pill to gain knowledge without 'manual' learning, finding that 57 of 58 participants would replace at least some of their learning experiences with a magic pill."