​When AI improves performance, what happens to learning?

​AI can make work faster, easier, or more polished. But a better result doesn’t always mean we understand more or have built the skill to do it ourselves.

​That gap is already showing up in research. In one study, students performed better while using AI, then struggled when it was taken away. A differently designed AI tutor produced a different outcome. These questions have existed around automation for decades. Generative AI brings them into writing, design, strategy, education, and everyday work in this era.

​In this Reading Room session, we’ll explore:

• ​When does better performance reflect actual learning?

• ​What do we stop practicing when AI takes over part of the work?

• ​How does the design of an AI tool change what we learn from using it?

• ​Where could AI make learning, feedback, and expertise more accessible?

• ​What do we want to keep learning how to do ourselves?

​How it works

​Before we meet, you’ll receive a small collection of research and writing selected to open up different sides of the question. Plan for about 35–45 minutes of reading.

​Then we’ll spend 90 minutes together in a small, facilitated discussion. We’ll talk through what stood out, what felt unresolved, and where the material connects with what we’re seeing in our own work.

​Come curious. Bring your questions and half-finished thoughts. You don’t need to have an answer.

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​What is the Reading Room?

​A reading and discussion series about the questions AI is creating.

​AI is changing from week to week, and we’re already using it while still learning how it affects our thinking, our craft, and society. The pressure to follow every new model, application, study, and claim leaves little time to ask what any of it means.

​Keeping up tells us what’s new. Making sense of it together helps us form our own judgment: what is changing, what seems promising, what deserves caution, and what we want our part in it to be.

​The Reading Room makes time for that. Before each session, we read a small set of research and writing organized around a theme. Then we meet to talk through what resonated, what didn’t feel clear, what questions the material raised for us, and what it may have missed.

​Come curious. Bring your questions and half-finished thoughts. You don’t need to have an answer, but we do expect you to participate.