Hello and welcome back to The AI Shift. This week: what’s the positive case for AI’s role in education? We have read (and also written) plenty this year about the danger that AI poses to young people’s ability to learn. So today we thought we’d take a more constructive approach. Are there any useful lessons from history? And what do we know so far about whether — and how — AI can be used to enhance the learning process? Email us: aishift@ft.com.

Sarah writes

I often meet academics who believe their students are leaning far too heavily on large language models for their essays or coding assignments. But a popular counter-argument compares this debate to one we’ve had before: about the pocket calculator. These new machines also prompted a “moral panic” about education in the 1970s, the argument goes. But young people do still acquire maths skills. In fact, they can now do more complex and better maths, thanks to the tools at their disposal.