Field Guide: Theories of Learning

Each card on this page offers a different account of how human learning happens – through changes in the brain, reinforcement, active construction, social interaction, and participation in institutions and systems of power.

None of these accounts explains everything on its own. Together, they give us a set of lenses for asking a more precise question when we hear that an AI system “learns”: What is changing, through what process, and in what sense does that resemble human learning?