--- title: Never-skilling: the research says juniors using AI never... description: A randomised controlled trial by Anthropic researchers found that junior developers using an AI assistant scored 50% on a comprehension quiz about code they... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/never-skilling-the-research-says-juniors-using-ai-never-learn-to-debug-g9phb9f7h twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Never-skilling: the research says juniors using AI never learn to debug | daily.dev og:description: A randomised controlled trial by Anthropic researchers found that junior developers using an AI assistant scored 50% on a comprehension quiz about code they... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/never-skilling-the-research-says-juniors-using-ai-never-learn-to-debug-g9phb9f7h og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/g9phb9F7H.png og:image:alt: Never-skilling: the research says juniors using AI never learn to debug og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Never-skilling: the research says juniors using AI never learn to debug **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 4 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A randomised controlled trial by Anthropic researchers found that junior developers using an AI assistant scored 50% on a comprehension quiz about code they had just written, compared to 67% for those coding by hand — nearly two letter grades apart. The speed advantage of AI did not materialise either. The study introduces the concept of 'never-skilling': novices who rely on AI during formative learning never build foundational skills, particularly debugging. A parallel Nature Medicine paper extends the concept to medical trainees and adds 'mis-skilling' — accepting AI errors as fact. The research suggests how AI is used matters more than whether it is used: high scorers asked conceptual questions, while low scorers delegated wholesale. Gartner predicts half of global organisations will require AI-free skills assessments by 2026, and Ford has already rehired engineers to fix AI-generated errors. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Does using an AI coding assistant hurt how much junior developers actually learn? Yes, according to a randomised controlled trial by Anthropic researchers. Fifty-two mostly junior engineers learned the Python library Trio, half with an AI assistant and half without. The AI group scored 50% on a quiz about the code they had just written versus 67% for the hand-coding group, a statistically significant gap Anthropic compares to nearly two letter grades, with the widest gap in debugging. _Anyone weighing how much to lean on AI while learning a new stack can track findings like this on daily.dev._ ### Did using an AI assistant at least make junior developers finish coding tasks faster? Not meaningfully. In Anthropic's trial, the AI-assisted group finished only about two minutes faster than those coding by hand, a difference too small to be statistically significant. Some participants spent up to 11 minutes composing queries to the assistant, roughly a third of their allotted time, eating into the speed advantage the tool was supposed to provide. _Developers deciding whether an assistant actually saves time can follow studies like this via daily.dev._ ### What is 'mis-skilling' as distinct from deskilling or never-skilling? Mis-skilling is when a trainee accepts an AI-generated error uncritically and files it away as fact, building false knowledge rather than none at all. It was coined alongside never-skilling (novices who never build core skills because AI removes the errors that teach them) in a Nature Medicine Perspective led by Duke-NUS Medical School with Harvard, UCL, and King's College London co-authors. _Teams building AI-assisted onboarding for new hires can keep track of terms like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills](https://daily.dev/posts/how-ai-assistance-impacts-the-formation-of-coding-skills-imfilsn9p) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI-coding tools could be breaking the junior engineer pipeline](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-coding-tools-could-be-breaking-the-junior-engineer-pipeline-zw0im56qf) · LeadDev · 3 upvotes · 2 comments - [AI is creating a generation of developers who can’t debug their own code](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-is-creating-a-generation-of-developers-who-can-t-debug-their-own-code-bbmqymdif) · The New Stack · 3 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/never-skilling-the-research-says-juniors-using-ai-never-learn-to-debug-g9phb9f7h) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Never-skilling: the research says juniors using AI never learn to debug","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/never-skilling-the-research-says-juniors-using-ai-never-learn-to-debug-g9phb9f7h","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/never-skilling-the-research-says-juniors-using-ai-never-learn-to-debug-g9phb9f7h"},"datePublished":"2026-07-13T13:09:34.972Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T20:53:01.866Z","description":"A randomised controlled trial by Anthropic researchers found that junior developers using an AI assistant scored 50% on a comprehension quiz about code they...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/0020d9df4d0c57c0d93cc7e415cb186b?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/0020d9df4d0c57c0d93cc7e415cb186b?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The Next Web","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Next Web","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/tnw","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/tnw"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/never-skilling-the-research-says-juniors-using-ai-never-learn-to-debug-g9phb9f7h","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-coding,anthropic","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Next Web","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/tnw"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Never-skilling: the research says juniors using AI never learn to debug"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/never-skilling-the-research-says-juniors-using-ai-never-learn-to-debug-g9phb9f7h#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Does using an AI coding assistant hurt how much junior developers actually learn?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes, according to a randomised controlled trial by Anthropic researchers. 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