The human brain is wired to enjoy solving challenges. Asking "What puzzles would you like to solve?" sparks passion and ownership. In contrast, asking "What are your goals?" often elicits a feeling of obligation and a list of burdensome tasks, draining the work of its inherent meaning and excitement.

To sustain motivation for a new skill, the practice must be intrinsically rewarding. A guitarist struggled with a teacher focused on classical etudes but thrived with one who immediately taught her songs connected to her late father. The goal shifted from a future achievement to an immediate, emotionally fulfilling experience, making the practice itself the payoff.

New features in Google's Notebook LM, like generating quizzes and open-ended questions from user notes, represent a significant evolution for AI in education. Instead of just providing answers, the tool is designed to teach the problem-solving process itself. This fosters deeper understanding, a critical capability that many educational institutions are overlooking.

The next evolution in AI-driven education isn't just personalizing pace, but reframing entire subjects through a student's unique passions. For example, an AI could teach physics principles using football analogies for a sports-loving child, making abstract concepts more relatable and memorable than a one-size-fits-all curriculum.

Conventional innovation starts with a well-defined problem. Afeyan argues this is limiting. A more powerful approach is to search for new value pools by exploring problems and potential solutions in parallel, allowing for unexpected discoveries that problem-first thinking would miss.

ASU's president argues that if an AI can answer an assignment, the assignment has failed. The educator's role must evolve to use AI to 'up the game,' forcing students to ask more sophisticated questions, making the quality of the query—not the synthesized answer—the hallmark of learning.

Founder Janice Omadeke credits her entrepreneurial drive to a childhood game her father created. At dinner, he would ask his children to identify a problem they saw that day and design a business to solve it, including target market and go-to-market strategy, effectively gamifying problem-solving.

In an age where AI can produce passable work, an educator's primary role shifts. Instead of focusing solely on the mechanics of a skill like writing, the more crucial and AI-proof job is to inspire students and convince them of the intrinsic value of learning that skill for themselves.

Instead of allowing AI to atrophy critical thinking by providing instant answers, leverage its "guided learning" capabilities. These features teach the process of solving a problem rather than just giving the solution, turning AI into a Socratic mentor that can accelerate learning and problem-solving abilities.