The Next AI Breakthrough Might Be You

Reading and algebra changed what people could do. Could AI help us discover the next great mental skill?

The most interesting thing AI could give you may be a mental ability you don’t have a name for yet.

An ability you can use after you close the app. Something you practice until a kind of problem that once confused you becomes easier to see, understand, or solve.

To understand why that possibility deserves serious attention, consider what you’re doing right now.

Before you learned to read, these sentences were collections of shapes. Now those shapes are putting an idea into your mind. You barely notice the extraordinary process that makes this possible.

A technology became a capability.

Writing had to be developed. Someone had to teach you how to use it. You had to practice. Eventually, the operation became so familiar that it started to feel like something your mind simply does.

Which raises a question:

What other abilities could become ordinary if we invented the right tools—and learned how to use them?

That question changes what I want from artificial intelligence.

Alongside machines that can do more, I want to explore whether AI can help us discover more things that humans can learn to do.

The inventions inside your mind

Consider an abacus.

At first, it is a physical object: a frame, rods, and beads. A learner practices representing numbers and performing calculations by moving those beads.

Some learners eventually perform the operations on an imagined abacus. The physical tool can be put away.

In a three-year randomized study involving 204 elementary-school children, students receiving mental-abacus instruction outperformed the comparison group on arithmetic tasks. The researchers did not find improvements in the basic cognitive abilities they measured. The children had acquired a powerful, specific skill through a learned system and sustained practice. Read the study.