Google's Head Of Learning Says AI Can't Solve Education's Real Problem
By Dan Fitzpatrick
Ben Gomes spent 21 years building Google Search. Now he argues the most important thing in education is something no algorithm can replicate.
Ben Gomes's mother was a geography teacher in India, but after her career was cut short by an allergy to chalk dust, she taught her children at home instead. She planted something that would shape the next five decades of her son's life: curiosity. Gomes went on to spend 21 years building Google Search, overseeing the system that processes billions of queries a day. Today, as Google's Chief Technologist for Learning and Sustainability, he is one of the company's most senior figures thinking about the future of education and the company's broader push to bring AI into education worldwide.When I sat down with Gomes, I wanted to understand something specific. In a moment when AI companies are racing to build automated tutors and personalized learning engines, what does one of the key leaders for Google's education efforts actually believe is the most important problem in learning?His answer was disarmingly simple: motivation. And he doesn't think AI is the solution.The Why, Not The How"The technology can improve how you learn and the details of it," Gomes said, "but the why you learn is a very human thing."It's a striking claim from someone whose employer is investing billions in AI-powered education tools. But Gomes kept returning to this distinction throughout our conversation, that the mechanics of learning are increasingly solvable with technology, while the desire to learn remains stubbornly, beautifully human.He grounded it in personal observation. "I don't know anybody, who is a high-achieving individual in life, who would say, I was unlocked by a book," he said. "They're almost always unlocked by a person."He paused. "It's almost always a teacher who said something, who treated them differently, who made them feel differently about the process of learning."As a former classroom teacher myself, working in post-industrial towns in the north of England, this rings true. I spent as much time on classroom management as I did on actual teaching. The students who...