We Need Guidelines for Learning and AI

Scott H. Young · 22 Jul 2026

A change of mind in this piece

Struggling with a hard problem before being shown the answer is not always the best way to learn; a hint or a worked example can beat floundering.

Recalls holdingIf you had asked me this question in the lead up to my 2019 book, Ultralearning, I would have said no. I was a strong advocate for doing hard problem solving and the associated mental effort it requires as a way to learn difficult skills.

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Scott H. Young did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
You cannot learn from work you did not do yourself.

Their wordsBut having AI do your homework is self-defeating. You can’t learn without doing the work.
Our reading
Struggling with a hard problem before being shown the answer is not always the best way to learn; a hint or a worked example can beat floundering.

Recalls holdingIf you had asked me this question in the lead up to my 2019 book, Ultralearning, I would have said no. I was a strong advocate for doing hard problem solving and the associated mental effort it requires as a way to learn difficult skills.

Their words nowGetting help, whether it’s in the form of a worked example, a completion problem or just a hint to get you unstuck, can be faster for learning than floundering.
Our reading
Asking AI for help on a first attempt robs you of the experience that builds your own judgement about the problem.

Their wordsAsking an AI for help with the start of an essay, for instance, will invariably shape what direction you end up following, robbing you of the crucial experience of building your own judgement around a topic and selecting your own path to research and argue.
Our reading
AI can supply the instruction and the feedback in a practice loop, but it cannot supply the middle step, which is doing the work.

Their wordsAI has the potential to assist with both the first and last element of that loop. What it cannot replace is the middle step—doing the work for yourself.

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The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.