Why Learn Something That a Machine Can Do for You?

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts Children still learn long division even though calculators exist, and many people continue to study languages even as AI translation becomes faster and more accurate.

Is there a deeper purpose for learning that technology will never touch? In this episode of How to Touch Grass , the co-hosts Natalie Brennan and Julie Beck hear from Michelle Miller, a cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University who studies technology and learning.

She explains that although the changing tides of tech may shape what and how we learn, as humans we still have the autonomy to build the minds we want.

The following is a transcript of the episode: [ Music ] Michelle Miller: Learning is how we build ourselves as individuals, and it’s how humanity shapes its course.

Julie Beck: Michelle Miller has thought a lot about the purpose of learning.

She’s a cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University focused on attention and memory and how technology shapes education.

As she said, learning is a very human endeavor.

But what we learn and the kinds of learning we value are shaped by the changing tides of technology.

Beck: I’m Julie Beck, a staff writer at The Atlantic .

Natalie Brennan: And I’m Natalie Brennan, a producer at The Atlantic .

Beck: This is How to Touch Grass .

Brennan: Julie, that sentiment—that what we learn changes with the tides of technology—feels really relevant to a change I’ve noticed in the last decade.

I think of coding and how big of a push that was when I was in college to Learn to code or you’ll be left behind.

But just a few years later, now my coder friends are really worried about job security, and the thing we’re being pressed to learn is learning how to correctly prompt AI so that it can code.