Google’s new AI and the Future of Learning document.

Some brief thoughts on Google’s new AI and the Future of Learning document.

It doesn’t say much that we don’t know already, and of the major LLM developers, Google seem to be the ones making the most effort to create a model specifically focused on learning, with LearnLM.

What I still don’t quite get is what they actually think future learning will look like. They write:

“We have a desire not to replace instruction, but to help human curiosity reach new heights.”

But then there’s a contradiction: much of what they describe sounds like AI doing a lot of the instructing.

It’s the familiar tension between, on one hand, a push for personalised learning, and on the other, saving teacher time for “human activities.” The personalisation seems to mean adaptive learning paths, which ultimately points towards individual rather than social learning. If that’s not what they mean, well, they don’t really give a view on what that looks like in practice, unless I’m missing something.

They do acknowledge the long history of these ideas and how we can learn from the past, but it’s still hard to shake the image of rows of students sitting in front of modern-day Skinner learning machines