OpenAI opens Learning Lab to study AI's classroom effects

OpenAI Education has launched Learning Lab, a research network intended to build evidence on how AI affects learning as school pilots widen into broader deployments. EdTech Innovation Hub reports the initiative will connect independent researchers across disciplines including learning science, neuroscience, economics, sociology, policy, and technology, and quotes OpenAI describing existing research on AI's effectiveness as "early and mixed."

Launch partners include the University of Tartu, tied to Estonia's national AI rollout; Stanford's Accelerator for Learning; Oxford's AIEOU global community of practice; Cornell's National Tutoring Observatory; and Bocconi University. Two experts in our Who's Who tracker circulated the piece the day it went live.

At the launch, Bocconi's Alfonso Gambardella and OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji presented findings from a randomised controlled trial of 1,053 first-year students in economics, finance and management. The trial split students into four groups: one received training in causal reasoning, one got access to ChatGPT Edu with GPT-4o, one got both, and one got neither. AI improved the quality of students' work; the critical-thinking training increased originality.

OpenAI acknowledges the risk that "AI could shortcut learning and encourage cognitive offloading," and positions Learning Lab as a way to fund longer-horizon evaluation. "Good research takes time, and some of the questions we're asking may take years to answer well," the company writes. Findings, it says, are meant to inform both the field and OpenAI's products.