Priya Lakhani

They are harder.

They all involve a productive struggle.

We know sustained mental effort strengthens the parts of the brain, and it's positively correlated with growth in the brain.

There was an amazing study in my home city of London with black taxi drivers.

Now, if you're a cabbie in London, you have to pass a test called a knowledge.

You have to memorize 26,000 streets in the city of London.

You're not allowed to use navigation apps.

Now, wow, exactly, right?

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, no Uber drivers for them, right?

And so neuroscientists scanned their brains, and they found that parts of the hippocampi in the brain, this is the part of the brain that's responsible for spatial memory and navigation, were larger in parts with experienced cabbies.

because you have to build all of those mental models, you have to generate new routes every time you have a new passenger.

And so they say that that growth, because of the positive correlation with what they have to do, is really meaningful and telling, and it is no different for learning.

Durable learning does not come from shortcuts.

It comes from certain types of effort, and this is why AI is amazing for education, because AI can spot patterns in how we all learn.

It can spot patterns in how concepts across subjects connect.

It can predict if you don't know something and provide you with that material.

at the right time.

It can provide us with timely, targeted interventions and give teachers those insights.

It can predict when you're just about to forget something and give you that material at just the right time.