Three research papers this week measured the same thing from different angles: AI tools produce immediate gains and measurable skill loss in the same motion. The US government's response is to prioritize AI tools in schools. Nobody appears to have read the papers.
The data is precise: AI reduces persistence. It provides a speedup that destroys the underlying expertise. Productivity is easy to count today; skill degradation is slow, diffuse, and shows up years later.
The Department of Education's new grant criteria do not require measurement of student skill retention. They only measure tool adoption. The government is subsidizing the industrialization of cognitive offloading.
The signal: Watch for when "evidence-based" education, a twenty-year standard, is officially redefined as "AI-compatible."