When learning a complex skill, AI tools might be used to aid in learning, or instead, might pose more of an obstacle to growth.
They could just provide you a way to avoid learning entirely.
Or, like training wheels, they could reduce complexity of some aspects, while allowing you to focus on others.
When learning actual riding, training wheels add extra wheels for stability, while a different approach, balance bikes, removes the need for pedalling.
By removing the need to pedal, balance bikes focus you on learning steering and balancing.
And by removing the need to balance, training wheels focus you on learning pedalling and steering.
Both reduce the number of variables you have to learn at a time, and in doing so, enhance the learning of the aspects that are left.
What training wheels don’t do very well, is help you learn to balance.
And what balance bikes certainly don’t help you do, is learn to pedal.
When considering the learning implications of AI should we measure learning based on the content the AI helps us with? Or the extraneous aspects that we now have time to handle ourselves?
Then again, parents eventually remove
training wheels,
but AI is here to stay.
So when will we ever be motivated to learn what it now handles for us?