Paper Jams

Upcoming Paper Jam: How AI Impacts Skill Formation

Dr. Leif Singer

19 Mar 2026 — 1 min read

We'll be meeting for Paper Jam #15 on Friday, March 27 at 2pm UTC. This month we're looking at the following paper:

Judy Hanwen Shen, Alex Tamkin
How AI Impacts Skill Formation (2026) [link]

This paper reports on a between-subjects randomized experiment that investigates how AI influences the learning of new programming concepts.

The work was done as part of the Anthropic Fellows Program, which I hadn't heard of before. I have to admit that it made me skeptical as to how this would influence what results get reported. I was positively surprised to see that even the abstract already shines a critical light on LLM use. Even though not mentioned in the paper, after my first scan I discovered the interesting idea of Desirable Difficulties — the idea from psychology that some kinds of friction are actually very beneficial for learning.

I've been wanting to make time for digging deeper into this paper since it came out, so I chose it as this month's Paper Jam candidate. I'm looking forward to the chat.

Paper Jams is a monthly one-hour video call where a small group discusses an academic paper on the human factors of making software. We follow the Chatham House Rule, and the conversation goes wherever the group takes it.

Interested? Subscribe to Paper Jams to join the call and meet a bunch of friendly and curious people.

Using Psychological Research to Influence the Behavior of LLMs

Do large language models trained on human data respond to the same psychological levers that sway us? Once a month, I meet with subscribers to my site's Paper Jam plan to discuss a paper about The Experience of Making Software. This post reports on Paper Jam #10. Thank

Developer Thriving: Four Sociocognitive Factors That Create Resilient Productivity on Software Teams

What factors make developers working in teams thrive? Context: once a month, I meet with subscribers to the Paper Jam plan of my blog to discuss a paper at the intersection of topics such as computer-supported collaborative work, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and psychology. This post reports on Paper Jam

Social Transparency in Networked Information Exchange

How do identity, content, and interaction transparency affect online interactions and collaboration? Context: once a month, I meet with subscribers to the Paper Jam plan of my blog to discuss a paper at the intersection of topics such as computer-supported collaborative work, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and psychology. This post

Paper Jams! An Experiment

I love working on meaningful things with others. It's how I feel connected with the rest of humanity. And it's when looking beyond my immediate community or organization that I tend to find the most surprising or interesting connections. When I was still in academia, it

Read more

Using Psychological Research to Influence the Behavior of LLMs

Developer Thriving: Four Sociocognitive Factors That Create Resilient Productivity on Software Teams

Social Transparency in Networked Information Exchange

Paper Jams! An Experiment