Jonathan Sanderson

Educator, web developer, and designer.

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

AI is meant free contributors from the bureaucracy.

[UI/UX Savior @UiSavior]

Lol 😂

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

https://t.co/QnSl8Sl6Il

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

The measurement becomes the goal, this is not a new idea.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: Amazon has reportedly scrapped its internal AI leaderboard as costs soared, with a senior executive telling staff: “don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI.”

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

https://t.co/aN745A1IqV

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

@CGBruhn Sometimes the team should not take the shortest path.

[The Shift Journal @TheShiftJournal]

Pyramid of Purpose

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

@RubenLaukkonen I like this idea of minimizing surprise, it seems to compliment using conflicting perspectives as a tactic for sense-making.

[Rimsha Bhardwaj @heyrimsha]

A Wharton economist ran a randomized controlled trial on almost a thousand high school students in Turkey.

The result was so brutal for the AI-in-education narrative that it had to be peer-reviewed by PNAS before people would believe it.

Her name is Hamsa Bastani. She teaches operations and information at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the study she published in 2025 alongside her co-authors is one of the cleanest experiments anyone has run on what AI actually does to learning when you remove it from the equation and check what is left.

The setup was a randomized controlled trial, the same methodology used in clinical drug trials. Nearly a thousand high school math students in Turkey were split into three groups and put through four sessions of ninety minutes each. One group practiced with GPT Base, a standard ChatGPT-4 interface that could answer any question directly. One group practiced with GPT Tutor, a version of the same model that had been prompted to guide students with hints rather than hand them the answer. One group practiced with nothing but their textbook and their own head.

During the practice sessions, the AI groups looked like a miracle. The GPT Base group solved 48% more problems than the students working alone. The GPT Tutor group solved 127% more. Every administrator looking at those numbers would have written a press release about the transformative power of AI in education and moved on.

Then the actual exam came, and AI was not allowed.

The students who had practiced with GPT Base scored 17% worse than the students who had practiced alone. Seventeen percent worse, despite having solved nearly half again as many problems in the sessions leading up to it. The students who had struggled the most, who had sat with the confusion and worked through it without a tool to rescue them, were now the only ones who could actually do the math when it counted.

Bastani's team read through the chat logs to understand what had actually been happening during the practice sessions, and the answer was exactly what the exam results had already implied. The GPT Base group had not been learning. They had been extracting answers and moving on, and every moment that felt like understanding was actually the model doing the cognitive work while the student's brain waited for the next problem to arrive. The paper describes it precisely: without guardrails, students attempt to use GPT-4 as a crutch during practice, and subsequently perform worse on their own.

The detail that should follow every conversation about AI in education is the one buried in the post-test survey results. The students who had relied on AI the most during practice were also the most confident they had understood the material. The tool had not just failed to teach them. It had convinced them they had learned something they had not, which is a different kind of failure entirely and a much harder one to correct because the student has no idea it is happening.

The crutch had made them confident and weak at the same time.

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

@catalinmpit Canadian in Austria! Add me please.

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

@vboykis You are not alone Vicki. I recently described myself as lazy to do work I would have been excited for years prior.

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

https://t.co/6gPtJnCK0C

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

I taught a UX/UI capstone project four years ago and one of the choices was to redesign the search experience as AI first. The students didn't want to do it and chose another option instead. I think at the time AI was so new that it was hard imagine the impact on everyday UX.

[Logan Kilpatrick @OfficialLoganK]

Today we are starting to roll out the biggest upgrade to the Google Search box in over 25 years — now completely reimagined with AI, along with Gemini 3.5 Flash as the new default model for AI mode users globally!

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

https://t.co/1sxT1WL1de

[Eminent_minds @minds_eminent]

According to Neuroscience, if you repeat these 3 phrases each morning, you will start to rewire your brain to become more positive, confident, and grateful

1. “Show me how good today gets.”
This activates your brain’s R.A.S to notice more opportunities.

2. “I’m grateful for…”
Gratitude increases dopamine shifting your nervous system into a more regulated, positive state.

3. “I can handle anything that comes my way today.”
This builds self efficacy and reduces threat response to your brain.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

This isn't AI, it's the Huajiang Canyon Bridge in Guizhou, China, the world's highest bridge at 625 meters above the river beneath it.

It features a man-made waterfall created by diverting karst spring water discovered during tunnel construction.

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

@codetaur Good example.

[Jonathan Sanderson @sanderjson]

@FU_joehudson Good post Joe, thanks.