Perplexity is saving my linguistics classmates

I have a dark past. I asked questions. In class. Lots of questions. Too many questions. I hear things, I get ideas, I notice gaps, I ask questions.

It's a compulsion.

Some of the questions helped classmates. To be honest more were probably confusing or distracting. I likely featured in classmate daydreams -- but not in a good way.

Worse, some of the questions confused the professor. Or exposed what they didn't understand. That could be embarrassing or even humiliating.

Now I'm back in the classroom, doing freshman linguistics.  As a 65yo, I can do classes at Minnesota state colleges and universities for free. We pay a lot in taxes, but there are benefits to living here.

My question compulsion is still there, but LLMs are saving everyone. I set up a linguistics "collection" in Perplexity with appropriate prompts; now I type my questions into my phone (allowed in class). I get the answer with Perplexity and spare my classmates.

Never say AI isn't good for something.

PS. Perplexity is to modern Google as Google was to Alta Vista. A qualitative improvement. It's almost as good as 1990s Google.