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Curriculum design in the age of AI

Theoretical Economics 2026-07-21 v1

Abstract

I develop a model of learning-by-doing and curriculum design, and use it to study the impact of artificial intelligence (AI). A myopic student faces a sequence of tasks that he can work on or delegate to AI. Work requires costly effort but builds skill; delegation requires no effort but builds no skill. A teacher designs a task sequence ("curriculum") that maximizes the student's skill development given his choices to work or delegate. Without AI, the teacher makes earlier tasks more effort-intensive and later tasks more skill-intensive. With AI, the teacher must distort the curriculum to incentivize effort, leading to less skill development. If AI complements effort, then improvements in AI quality make high-skill students learn faster but low-skill students learn slower.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.18735,
  title  = {Curriculum design in the age of AI},
  author = {Benjamin Davies},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.18735},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

44 pages, 7 figures