Our tendency to anthropomorphize everything and relate to everything socially should inform how we design and integrate AI into education.
The recent HBR study "Cybernetic teammate" (Dell’Acqua et al., 2025) found that individuals working with GenAI not only produced better results but felt more confident, engaged, and emotionally fulfilled. That emotional payoff, however, also raises a concern: if AI becomes perceived as the most responsive or reliable “teammate,” we risk, as Dana Daher recently commented, "shifting the center of gravity" in AI-assisted learning and work environments—potentially sidelining human voices, judgment, and growth.
This is why educational design must emphasize student metacognition, not just AI capability. Students need to reflect on how they engage with AI—why it feels trustworthy, when it shouldn’t, and how their own prompts and expectations shape its responses.
I also think there is too much silence on practice. There is a Western bias of theory over practice, orthodoxy over orthopraxy, cognition over action, mind over body. West over East. I think we need to develop a system of neuroscientific behaviors--rituals even--to guide and shape thinking and attitudes about AI and AI use.
Our tendency to anthropomorphize everything and relate to everything socially should inform how we design and integrate AI into education.
The recent HBR study "Cybernetic teammate" (Dell’Acqua et al., 2025) found that individuals working with GenAI not only produced better results but felt more confident, engaged, and emotionally fulfilled. That emotional payoff, however, also raises a concern: if AI becomes perceived as the most responsive or reliable “teammate,” we risk, as Dana Daher recently commented, "shifting the center of gravity" in AI-assisted learning and work environments—potentially sidelining human voices, judgment, and growth.
This is why educational design must emphasize student metacognition, not just AI capability. Students need to reflect on how they engage with AI—why it feels trustworthy, when it shouldn’t, and how their own prompts and expectations shape its responses.
I also think there is too much silence on practice. There is a Western bias of theory over practice, orthodoxy over orthopraxy, cognition over action, mind over body. West over East. I think we need to develop a system of neuroscientific behaviors--rituals even--to guide and shape thinking and attitudes about AI and AI use.
sounds like a great read! thanks for the book rec