Make no mistake, AI in education removes valuable “mess” of learning, critic warns

The growing integration of AI in education risks removing essential “messy” learning experiences that foster creativity and cognitive development. Lance Ulanoff’s critique compares AI-assisted learning to “sealed fingerpainting”—a sanitized process that eliminates the valuable trial and error that helps children develop critical thinking skills and intellectual curiosity. This perspective challenges educators and parents to consider whether AI’s efficiency comes at the cost of fundamental developmental processes that shape how children learn.

The big picture: AI classroom tools are growing increasingly common, with teachers turning to artificial intelligence to help students generate ideas and complete assignments without experiencing the crucial developmental stage of making mistakes.

• The author uses the metaphor of modern “sealed fingerpainting” kits—where children push paint around under plastic without getting messy—to illustrate how AI creates an antiseptic learning environment.
• Just as fingerpainting’s value lies partly in its messiness, learning’s effectiveness depends on trial, error, and the feedback loop that develops when students make mistakes and learn from them.

Why this matters: Mistake-making is not merely incidental to learning but represents a fundamental cognitive process that shapes how children develop problem-solving abilities and creativity.

• A 2016 study titled “Learning from Errors” underscores the educational importance of errors in developing critical thinking skills.
• The current trend toward AI-assisted learning shortcuts these essential developmental processes, potentially stunting intellectual curiosity in students who become reliant on artificial assistance.

Key concern: AI generates content using statistical probability rather than the organic human thought process that involves brainstorming, making mistakes, and refining ideas.

• Teachers cited in a USA Today article are already using AI to help students generate essay ideas after noticing students’ ideas were becoming “stale,” bypassing the collaborative brainstorming process traditionally used in classrooms.
• Unlike humans who learn through exploration and failure, Large Language Models like ChatGPT are trained on vast datasets to produce optimized outputs that don’t reflect the developmental learning process.

The author’s position: While not anti-AI in principle, Ulanoff argues that artificial intelligence in educational settings fundamentally misaligns with how children naturally develop cognitive abilities.

• The article acknowledges that convincing parents and students about AI’s potential harms to learning will be challenging, as the technology offers appealing shortcuts.
• The underlying concern is that AI’s efficiency and cleanliness comes at the cost of the “beautiful mess that is learning”—the essential chaos that helps develop critical thinking and creativity.