Apr 8 • Creative Force Dispatch
Creative Force Dispatch
This week’s three stories, from my reading, share a single throughline question: what happens when the tools outpace the humans who use them? Google DeepMind’s Aletheia is now producing publishable mathematics research with zero human intervention. Meanwhile, a sweeping RAND survey reveals that students are using AI for homework at record rates—while simultaneously worrying it’s hollowing out their ability to think. And a new study out of NC State and Carnegie Mellon shows that even when teachers have AI-powered dashboards tracking every student, they still gravitate toward the same kids over and over. I hope you enjoy it if you get a moment to read and reflect.
DeepMind’s Aletheia: The AI That Writes Its Own Math Papers
Google DeepMind (blog + arXiv) • February–March 2026 • Research Report
Google DeepMind has introduced Aletheia, a mathematics research agent that represents a genuine leap beyond AI systems that merely solve competition problems. Powered by an advanced version of Gemini Deep Think, Aletheia doesn’t just answer questions—it conducts original research. The system operates through an iterative loop: a Generator proposes candidate proofs, a Verifier flags logical gaps, and a Reviser repairs them, cycling until the proof is clean. The result is an agent that achieved 95.1% accuracy on the IMO-Proof Bench Advanced, shattering the previous record of 65.7%.
This isn’t a story about AI replacing mathematicians. It’s a story about the arrival of a “tireless collaborator” that never gets stuck, never gets attached to a beautiful wrong idea, and never needs a walk to cool off. For math educators, the deeper question is pedagogical: if AI can now generate and verify original proofs, what does “learning to do mathematics” mean for the next generation of students?
Read: deepmind.google
Students Use AI More Than Ever—and Worry It’s Eroding Their Thinking
RAND Corporation • March 25, 2026 • Research Report
A new RAND Corporation survey of more than 1,200 students ages 12 to 29 has surfaced one of the most striking paradoxes in education right now: students are adopting AI tools for schoolwork at an accelerating rate while simultaneously becoming more convinced that those tools are undermining their ability to think critically. The share of middle schoolers using AI for homework rose from 30% to 46% between May and December 2025. For high schoolers, it climbed from 49% to 63% over the same period.
At the same time, 67% of students now agree that AI use for schoolwork harms critical thinking skills—up from 54% just ten months earlier. The concern was even sharper among non-users, with 78% expressing worry, compared to 60% among those who actually use AI. Female students were more likely to voice concern than male students (75% versus 59%). Students reported using AI most commonly to get better explanations of assignments (38%), brainstorm ideas (35%), look up facts (33%), and draft or revise writing (33%). Read: rand.org
“Sticky Help”: Why Teachers Keep Helping the Same Kids—Even with AI Dashboards
NC State University / Carnegie Mellon University • April 7, 2026 • Research Study (LAK26 Conference)
A new study from researchers at NC State and Carnegie Mellon University reveals a counterintuitive pattern in AI-enhanced classrooms: even when teachers have sophisticated dashboards tracking every student’s engagement in real time, they still tend to help the same subset of students over and over—while other students go consistently unvisited. The researchers call this phenomenon “sticky help.”
The study analyzed 1.4 million student-system interactions from 339 students across 14 middle and high school math classes using MATHia, an intelligent tutoring system. Using mixed-effects models and cross-lagged panel analyses, the researchers found that students who received help from the teacher in earlier sessions were significantly more likely to receive help again later—even after accounting for their current engagement state. If a student was idle or disengaged but hadn’t received help before, they were less likely to be visited than a previously helped student who was doing fine. Read: news.ncsu.edu
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