So, when someone comes to me with an issue and shows they have done at least done the basic legwork, I'll be more likely to help them out than someone who just says "xyz doesn't work" but has done zero work on their own to troubleshoot it, because I don't have time to guide some junior on utterly basic stuff - and that is why so many job postings say "x years of experience" required: the existing staff is drowning and can't handle the enormous workload of training juniors.

Obviously that has negative mid- to long-term consequences as when no juniors get trained you'll eventually run out of seniors, but I have no idea how to get this fixed, especially not on a societal level.

Sometimes the bot can't help, but by the time I come to that conclusion I'm now familiar enough to ask the professor in a way that doesn't feel like a waste of his time.

Your O-chem professor sounds like a jerk, but there probably is some merit, in general, to the idea that we can maximize the efficacy of teachers by thinking a bit harder about the questions first.

Now we built AI for the cognition, but it will turn out that the patience is almost more important."

You never used a 3D printer or other kind of slow robot, have you?

Computers are infinitely patient and relentless. That has huge implications.

I've experimented with asking GPT-4 technical questions, and the moment you have something moderately complex, you start occasionally getting outright incorrect information (library functions which do not exist, missing correct answers entirely, products of entirely wrong category, descriptions of completely wrong things...)