Don't Outsource the Learning

Anthropic ran a randomized trial in early 2026 where engineers learned a new Python library, half with AI assistance and half without. Both groups finished the tasks at the same speed. But the AI group bombed the follow-up comprehension quiz: 50% versus 67% for the manual group, with the gap widening on debugging. The interesting cut was inside the AI group itself. Engineers who used AI to ask conceptual questions scored above 65%. Engineers who copy-pasted the generated code scored under 40%.