AI can help us find answers faster, understand complex topics, and learn new things. But even with it, gaining knowledge faster doesn’t always translate into learning how to apply it in practice—and this gap is especially noticeable among the Zoomer generation.
AI can help us find answers faster, understand complex topics, and learn new things. But even with it, gaining knowledge faster doesn’t always translate into learning how to apply it in practice—and this gap is especially noticeable among the Zoomer generation.
This is stated in the global study The Progress Report 2026 from EdTech company Preply.
The Progress Report 2026 surveyed 5,050 working people from nine countries who had developed their professional skills over the past year. The study covered the US, UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Japan and Argentina.
Overall, AI has become one of the primary learning methods for all surveyed working people. It is used alongside online courses, videos, books, and on-the-job training, and as a primary learning format, AI is already overtaking corporate programs or online courses.
Learning with AI gives a certain sense of speed. People who use AI daily are almost twice as likely as those who don’t to say they learn faster than they expected. However, the most active AI users are more likely to admit that they have found it harder to understand how learning actually works.
Preply calls this the Progress Gap—the gap between feeling like you're learning a lot and being able to confidently use a new skill in a real-world situation.
This gap is particularly acute among Generation Z. Most Zoomers say they learn a lot but don’t see any real improvement, and more than half have already encountered a situation where they couldn’t apply what they learned in real life. Younger respondents are also more likely than older generations to drop out of school.
However, the study authors do not conclude that AI is the cause of this. They only note that those who are more active users of modern tools seem to be more acutely aware of the difference between “I figured it out” and “I can do it myself.”
And the most active daily users of AI were top managers. Almost half of senior executives turn to AI every day — more often than middle managers and non-executive employees.
Also, most respondents do not want to learn only with the help of AI. Human feedback and accountability to another person were cited by respondents as stronger motivators for regular learning than AI reminders. And three-quarters of those surveyed prefer a format where AI is combined with human assistance. Even among those who use AI every day, the majority want human support to remain a central part of learning.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that AI is already changing the approach to education at Ukrainian universities. Lviv Polytechnic, for example, believes that programming homework as a form of control is gradually losing its meaning.
