{"id":18353,"date":"2026-04-29T13:53:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T21:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=18353"},"modified":"2026-04-30T05:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T13:24:08","slug":"ultralearning-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/29\/ultralearning-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wrote Ultralearning. This is What I\u2019d Change Because of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/ultralearning\/\">Ultralearning<\/a> was published in 2019. It documents the process of intensive self-education that inspired some of my self-guided projects learning languages, computer science, art and more.<\/p>\n<p>The book went on to become a surprise bestseller, with over 200,000 copies sold and dozens of translated editions. To this day, the bulk of new reader emails I get are from people who discovered me through <em>Ultralearning<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A question I get asked a lot is how the book would change if it were published today. In 2019, the conversation about AI was still a whisper. Now, it\u2019s deafening.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I\u2019d like to walk through <em>Ultralearning<\/em> and look at what\u2019s changed, what hasn\u2019t, and what I think the future holds for learning and education.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Hasn\u2019t Changed<\/h2>\n<p>The basic message of Ultralearning, I believe, still holds up pretty well:<\/p>\n<p>Technology is widening the gulf between the haves and have-nots of human capital. Learning in school is insufficient. To achieve, we need to continually add to our skills and knowledge, and doing so efficiently is imperative given our information-saturated environment.<\/p>\n<p>AI has only accelerated those trends.<\/p>\n<p>While some <a href=\"https:\/\/economics.mit.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/inline-files\/Noy_Zhang_1.pdf\">early reports<\/a> suggested AI might be an equalizer, helping mediocre programmers and writers produce at a higher level, I think those early takes now seem naive. If anything, the fruitful branches of the skill tree for becoming a professional programmer have only gotten higher\u2014with tasks that were previously for junior devs now wholly within the grasp of automated agents.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18354\" style=\"width:642px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning1.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning1-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Some prognosticators suggest that the culmination of this process will be the devaluing of all human skills. Why bother learning <em>anything<\/em> at all if AI will soon do it better than you?<\/p>\n<p>\u2028\u2028I\u2019m skeptical of this as a final outcome. I tend to think there will continue to be humans doing human jobs far into the future, if only because certain kinds of work are inherently humanistic. But the medium-term outcome seems to clearly back the urgent need for humans to learn deeper and more robust skills to compete.<\/p>\n<p>AI has not fundamentally changed the effort involved in learning. <em>Ultralearning<\/em> was written from a particular vantage point: a person eager to learn and willing to do the hard work required. These people have always been a minority, and AI cannot change the intrinsic effort required.<\/p>\n<p>So, as a proportion of the population, I don\u2019t expect an explosion in impressive autodidacts any more than we saw with the arrival of the Internet. The world\u2019s knowledge is already at our fingertips, but most people will still prefer to watch funny videos instead. AI certainly isn\u2019t changing that.<\/p>\n<p>But, at a tactical level, AI has created new possibilities (and pitfalls) that didn\u2019t exist when I wrote <em>Ultralearning<\/em>. So let\u2019s look at some of those, following the nine principles of the book.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #1: Meta-learning<\/h2>\n<p>This is probably the chapter most in need of a rewrite. Self-education has always stumbled on the bootstrapping-problem of knowledge: how do you organize an effective learning project when you lack the knowledge to organize it?<\/p>\n<p>My solution in the book was to encourage people to do research: figure out how a skill works, talk to experts and map out what you need to learn before you start.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18355\" style=\"width:564px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning2.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning2-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>AI has dramatically reduced the cost of doing this kind of research, and not only for academic subjects. Even obscure practical skills can now be broken down into discrete subtopics, practice activities, lists of facts, concepts and more. <\/p>\n<p>\u2028\u2028My go-to approach to tackling a new topic area these days is to fire up ChatGPT and get it to start with a Deep Research on the topic, beginning with some of my major questions. The resulting document isn\u2019t usually on par with genuine experts, but I very quickly narrow in on what sorts of directions I need to take to fill in my research.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, if you\u2019re learning a less academic skill set, using AI can surface the current best practices and give you the basic building blocks for a learning project.<\/p>\n<p>I very rarely stay totally within AI responses for meta-learning. It\u2019s always good to get to the ground truth of some genuine expert or teacher\u2019s curriculum. Finding those teachers and experts and the organizing paradigms that lead to them is much easier now with AI.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #2: Focus<\/h2>\n<p>AI hasn\u2019t changed this principle. Learning anything requires time. Even when you do projects efficiently, they\u2019re still an enormous amount of work. If you can\u2019t put the time in, you can\u2019t get the results.<\/p>\n<p>Learning also requires attention. If you can\u2019t devote large chunks of undistracted time to a project, you\u2019ll fail to build deep skills and understanding.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18356\" style=\"width:534px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning3.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning3-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning3-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2028\u2028The attentional ecosystem has only gotten worse since <em>Ultralearning<\/em> was published. When I was doing projects in my early twenties, the major distractions were Reddit threads and the occasional Facebook post. Now, an endless treadmill of short-form video content on our phones means we can play the attentional slot machine all day without pause.<\/p>\n<p>\u2028Currently, I see AI-generated content as less appealing than human-generated content, so I don\u2019t see it making the problem of addictive social media much worse. Perhaps in a few years AI-generated feeds will be more enticing than human-created content, and I\u2019ll need to revise this point.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #3: Directness<\/h2>\n<p>Practice the skill you want to get good at. Do the real thing and avoid substitutes.<\/p>\n<p>AI probably makes this harder. Because AI is so compelling, there\u2019s a temptation to do AI-mediated practice rather than engaging in the hard, scary, and sometimes uncomfortable, real-world skill that directness suggests.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18357\" style=\"width:604px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning4.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning4-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning4-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Take language learning, for instance. In <em>Ultralearning<\/em>, I was highly skeptical of the gamified drills offered by apps like Duolingo. To me, they simply omit so much of the actual skill of conversing in another language that you could play these games for years and still feel uncomfortable ordering food at a restaurant.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, I\u2019ve heard people claim that they\u2019re using AI to learn languages, writing\u2014and even social skills(!!).<\/p>\n<p>Of course, one could easily imagine someone who is having real conversations, publishing essays and attending social events simply using AI to shore up some weak points. But, more often, I worry that people are using the verisimilitude that AI creates to try to avoid doing the real thing entirely.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #4: Drill<\/h2>\n<p>The counterpart to directness is drill: breaking down a complex skill into smaller parts, focusing on those smaller parts either in isolation or with greater focus to make selective improvement. These drills can include conjugation exercises for Spanish, practicing layups for basketball, making value studies for painting, and more.<\/p>\n<p>Here AI presents a whole range of new opportunities through AI-generated practice problems, flashcards, worksheets or feedback.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, one of the major difficulties in my language learning projects had been how much weight to put on vocabulary study through flashcards. On the one hand, an efficient spaced-repetition system, backed by some careful mnemonics, can make it much faster to acquire a few thousand words of basic vocabulary. On the other hand, flashcards can lead to brittle knowledge that is difficult to generalize to real conversations.<\/p>\n<p>A major cause of my ambivalence with flashcards is that the paradigm assumes each word is an atomic fact. But what <a href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/MillerWords1987.pdf\">we are actually learning<\/a> when we learn new words is not merely a definition or translation. Instead, we\u2019re also learning contextual associations for how that word typically appears in spoken or written language. It\u2019s how we know the difference between the words <em>small<\/em> and <em>petite<\/em>, or <em>big<\/em> and <em>grand<\/em>. These associations have to be learned implicitly, and can\u2019t simply be memorized as part of the definition.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning5.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18358\" style=\"width:692px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning5.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning5-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning5-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Now, with AI, we can generate flashcards that always place the to-be-learned word in a novel sentence, giving us the needed repetition alongside the variation required for learning contextual cues. This, to me, is a major upgrade over the flashcard paradigm.<\/p>\n<p>Conjugations are another area that is difficult to learn without premade practice questions. The issue is that what needs to be learned isn\u2019t a fixed association (e.g., <em>agua<\/em> <code>-><\/code> water) or a verbalized rule (e.g., \u201cchange -ar to -o for first-person present tense\u201d) but rather a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/15\/act-r\/\">procedural mapping<\/a> that needs to take a variable input and give a variable output.<\/p>\n<p>To learn procedures like this effectively, we need flashcards that vary the input\/output relationship to show all permutations of the pattern. The problem is that this used to be hard to do before AI. Now, of course, we can use AI to generate infinite variations of the same basic practice problems, which solves the material gap that exists for a lot of skills.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #5: Retrieval<\/h2>\n<p>Memory is strengthened more by recall than by review. If you want to learn something by heart, you need to practice remembering it, not just looking at it.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve seen a lot of claims that AI can be helpful with this aspect of learning. For instance, AI tools can generate quizzes based on the books you\u2019re reading allowing you to deepen your knowledge of the content.<\/p>\n<p>I tend to be a bit skeptical about the utility here. Not because quizzes or practice questions are bad (they certainly aren\u2019t), but a lot of the value in retrieval comes from selecting what knowledge you ought to retrieve.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, a naive way to do retrieval practice is simply to quiz yourself on every factual claim made in a text or book. But rarely is the main goal of learning a complete verbatim memory of every factual claim in a book. Instead, we typically want to be able to restate the main ideas and understand the key points and concepts.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes we may have more idiosyncratic goals, like remembering the authors of key studies for future research or knowing the dates to put historical events inside a chronological context. But memorizing every single fact in a text is almost never a good use of limited studying time.<\/p>\n<p>This is not an idle concern. The world of knowledge is infinite. The effort needed to memorize every fact from one text is effort that cannot be spent on other texts. I\u2019d much rather remember the gist of ten books\u2014their big, important ideas\u2014than know every bit of trivia contained in just one of them.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning6.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18359\" style=\"width:636px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning6.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning6-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning6-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Practice problems and quizzes designed by a teacher avoid this problem because the teacher has in mind clear educational goals. When they ask a question on a test, it is because they think it is important to know that fact or idea. But if we give an AI a random text without this pedagogical context, the chance that it\u2019s going to narrow in on what is important is much lower\u2014not because of insufficiently capable AI, but because it doesn\u2019t have a useful goal. If you asked a human to generate a quiz from a random text absent any pedagogical goals, they\u2019d also make a bad quiz.<\/p>\n<p>Retrieval, of course, doesn\u2019t need quizzes to work. Free recall, the paradigm where you simply try to remember as much as you can from a source, works remarkably well and definitely doesn\u2019t require AI. So does writing essays about topics you\u2019re learning, which may soon become a lost art. These are low-tech tools that work amazingly well for retrieving knowledge.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #6: Feedback<\/h2>\n<p>Feedback is essential for learning. But we often get sparse or incomplete feedback in our learning efforts, which slows down progress.<\/p>\n<p>In symbolic domains, where the skill is primarily mediated through tokens and text, I think currently-existing AI can do a ton to enhance feedback. If I\u2019m trying to improve as a writer, I can get AI to critique my use of research, word choice and storytelling. If I\u2019m trying to improve as a programmer, I can be shown more efficient design patterns or algorithms for solving the same task.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning7.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18360\" style=\"width:514px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning7.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning7-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning7-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2028A while back, I recorded some promotional videos in Mandarin for a translation of my book. I wrote the script myself, but then I asked AI to offer suggestions, and it fixed some places where I wasn\u2019t speaking very idiomatically. Before AI, I would have had to pay someone for that advice.<\/p>\n<p>In non-symbolic domains, where AI still underperforms human beings, the value of AI feedback is a lot more limited. I can\u2019t easily use AI to give me feedback on art, skiing or interviewing ability at the moment, so human feedback remains essential.<\/p>\n<p>AI also can\u2019t replace the need for direct feedback from the environment. Entrepreneurs need data about product-market fit. Comedians need to know whether their jokes are funny. Writers like me need to know what their audience already thinks and believes. That kind of feedback is essential to the skill, and AI can\u2019t offer a substitute.<\/p>\n<p>The more dangerous cases are areas where AI could give good feedback, in theory, but it\u2019s been trained not to because people often don\u2019t like getting true feedback. Sycophancy is rampant. For a lot of us, hearing nice things about our ideas and skills is more desirable than hearing the truth.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #7: Retention<\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019ve always had mixed feelings about mnemonics. They can be incredibly powerful. The right chaining of visual associations or spatial memories can make indelible links between hard-to-associate facts. But they also take a while to learn and can be time-consuming to apply.<\/p>\n<p>AI has the potential to make mnemonics more valuable. My friend and language-learning inspiration, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fluentin3months.com\/about\/\">Benny Lewis<\/a>, for instance, told me that he\u2019s been using AI these days to help him generate \u201csounds like\u201d associations for the keyword mnemonic.<\/p>\n<p>\u2028\u2028For those unfamiliar with the method, the basic idea is to take a foreign language word and create a phonetic clue by mapping it to a similar sounding word or phrase in English (or another language you know well) and then visually mapping that to a highly memorable picture.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, if you\u2019re trying to remember the French word <em>chavirer<\/em> -&gt; to capsize, you can make a phonetic clue of \u201cshave an ear,\u201d then you have a mental picture of an oversized ear sitting in a canoe, shaving its beard while the canoe flips over. Visualize that mentally once or twice and the association sticks, whereas it may take dozens of repetitions for the direct association to take root.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning8.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18361\" style=\"width:580px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning8.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning8-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning8-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>The keyword method works, but it <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/26173288\/\">hasn\u2019t always performed well<\/a> in lab experiments. The reason is that it often takes too much time and training to get right. Modern LLMs are well-suited to the kind of wordplay tasks required to generate these sorts of images.<\/p>\n<p>Spacing is another area where I expect AI to be some help, particularly the newer agentic AI paradigm. A major hiccup in applying spacing in learning is that it is a logistical nightmare to keep track of all the things you\u2019ve learned and ensure some measure of regular re-exposure. Spaced repetition software does this for flashcards, but, as already discussed, those have fairly narrow applications.<\/p>\n<p>However, I can easily imagine a future where an AI agent helps you manage your workload by resurfacing questions and ideas from material you\u2019ve recently studied. With some guidance, you may even solve some of the retrieval problems mentioned earlier by getting it to quiz you on the major ideas.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #8: Intuition<\/h2>\n<p>Understanding is central to learning. But the process of gaining understanding is still somewhat mysterious and poorly understood.<\/p>\n<p>While I\u2019m generally in favor of a <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/chapter\/10.1007\/978-3-030-43620-9_26\">knowledge-in-pieces model<\/a> of conceptual learning, where understandings are built bit by bit through many exposures, it\u2019s also clear that a well-chosen analogy, metaphor or explanation can suddenly make the entire idea \u201cclick.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Ultralearning<\/em>, I shared the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/the-feynman-technique-explained\/\">Feynman Technique<\/a> my somewhat-apocryphal method of self-explanations that I made heavy use of during the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/myprojects\/mit-challenge-2\/\">MIT Challenge<\/a>. The basic method is simple:<\/p>\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Write down the concept or idea you want to explain.<\/li>\n<li>Write out an explanation as if you were teaching it to someone else.<\/li>\n<li>Whenever you get stuck, go back to your study material and notes and re-read until you understand.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The technique works, but it is often frustrated by #3. If you don\u2019t understand, even after reading the notes more deeply, you may waste a lot of time trying to find a better explanation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning9.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18362\" style=\"width:632px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning9.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning9-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning9-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2028\u2028Similarly, the method can backfire when conceptual confusion is glossed over rather than dug into\u2014you may maneuver around your own ignorance rather than confronting it. This is why the method benefits from specificity: if you\u2019re having difficulty solving a problem, make the topic of your teaching that exact problem, not the concept it tests in general terms.<\/p>\n<p>AI has massive power to resolve both of these problems. For starters, while I find AI explanations are still somewhat inferior to good teachers, the gap is closing, and well-posed questions can generally get accurate answers. Using AI as a Socratic tutor is one of the ways it can help build understanding.<\/p>\n<p>Second, AIs can ask pointed follow-up questions to reveal gaps in knowledge you don\u2019t even know you are missing. I now frequently upload portions of essays I write where I explain some bit of science or history and ask the AI what I\u2019m getting wrong. Often it nitpicks, but there are definitely occasions where I have a basic misconception.<\/p>\n<p>The pitfall, of course, is that an on-demand system that can explain anything can also make it easy to skip steps #1 and #2 of the Feynman Technique. It\u2019s very easy to ask AI to generate the explanation, skim through it and convince yourself you could have generated it on your own.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n<p>The risk of using AI to learn is that not learning at all is always the lowest effort strategy, and most models are designed to allow you to do exactly that. Without guardrails, the default is to skip over the mental work needed to build intuition, even if the technology can, in theory, assist in constructing a deeper understanding.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Principle #9: Experimentation<\/h2>\n<p>Experimentation, the process of trying out different things and figuring out what works, both within the skill you\u2019re trying to master and in the process of learning itself, is a recurring theme in <em>Ultralearning<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The new AI tools offer an acceleration of these possibilities. Not only because many new possible methods for learning now exist, such as on-demand Socratic tutoring, procedurally-generated practice problems, knowledge management, mnemonics generation and more, but also because many of the seemingly-useful applications are really pitfalls in disguise.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning10.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18363\" style=\"width:560px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning10.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning10-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ultralearning10-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>If I had to go back and redo any of the challenges I wrote about in <em>Ultralearning<\/em>, the possibilities for learning them would have changed dramatically. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/myprojects\/mit-challenge-2\/\">MIT Challenge<\/a> could have used AI to fill in material gaps, given me extra practice problems and gotten me unstuck when my self-explanations only led to confusion. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/myprojects\/the-year-without-english-2\/\">Year Without English<\/a> could have had auto-generated flashcards, grammar explanations and corrective feedback on conversation recordings. I could have vibecoded software that could automatically give me detailed corrective feedback on the accuracy of my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/myprojects\/portrait-challenge\/\">portrait drawings<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What wouldn\u2019t have changed is the mental effort involved in learning skills, nor the joy and struggle in actually learning them. Despite the momentous technological changes we\u2019re experiencing, I am still convinced that both the value and strain in learning new things will be an enduring constant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updates to the methodology I suggested in my 2019 book, given the possibilities created by AI tools for learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-personal-development","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I Wrote Ultralearning. 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