Adapting to thrive: How AI rewrote Learnosity’s DNA for a new era of learning

Every wave of technology promises to change education. Most break long before the shore.

Generative AI is different—not because the hype is louder, but because the capability curve keeps climbing while the cost curve keeps falling. Learnosity CEO Gavin Cooney has watched plenty of technology cycles come and go. This one, he argues, rewrites the rules.

Faster than anything before it

Most software plateaus. AI hasn’t.

“GenAI has improved much quicker than expected,” says Gavin. “It’s improving more than any other technology ever. Google Search, Gmail, Excel and other normal technology doesn’t get that much better over the years, but AI is getting so good so quickly.”

“GenAI has improved much quicker than expected. It’s improving more than any other technology ever.” — Gavin Cooney

That relentless improvement changes how product leaders should plan. A capability that misses the mark today may clear it comfortably in six months—which rewards teams who build the plumbing now and swap in better models as they arrive.

Learnosity designed its AI suite around exactly that principle: Author Aide, Feedback Aide, and Item Bank Health Check all abstract fast-moving models behind stable APIs.

Substance over AI washing

The AI-in-education market splits into two broad camps. Some products make today’s workflows meaningfully better—faster authoring, lighter grading loads, cleaner item banks. Others dazzle in a demo but ask buyers to reinvent how they assess before any value lands, which few organizations can do quickly.

Buyers have grown wiser to the difference. The hype persists, but evaluators now bring a healthy dose of skepticism: they’ll license AI only when they can see how a tool improves efficacy in a cost-effective way.

At Learnosity, that skepticism is welcome. The team has no patience for AI washing—stamping the letters “AI” on an otherwise unchanged product. The lesson for product builders: lead with the problem you solve and the efficacy you can prove, not the model you call.

AI in the company’s DNA

The shift runs deeper than the product line.

“AI has massively changed how we act internally and how we see ourselves,” Gavin says. “You can notice the difference in where we are, how we talk about ourselves, how we’re innovating, how we’re moving forward, and how excited we are about the whole thing.”

Learnosity backed that shift with structure—a dedicated AI Labs team focused solely on bringing production-grade AI assessment tools to market.

“AI has massively changed how we act internally and how we see ourselves.” — Gavin Cooney

Raising the bar, again

Learnosity built its reputation by setting the standard others had to meet.

“I always give the example of the NCTM conference in Chicago: when I look around, there are 15 companies there powered by Learnosity,” says Gavin. “If you’re the 16th company and you’ve chosen not to license from us, that’s fine—but then you’ve got to build assessment technology that’s at least as good as ours. That’s the power of Learnosity: we single-handedly raised the bar of what’s acceptable in learning products.”

AI hands the industry a chance to raise that bar again—this time on a problem education has circled for decades. The sector has talked about authentic assessment for years while defaulting back to the same old tests, largely because delivering authentic assessment at scale was never practical. AI finally makes the practical part possible, and Learnosity intends to build the tools that unlock it.

“We single-handedly raised the bar of what’s acceptable in learning products.” — Gavin Cooney

The long view

Gavin resists short-term prediction but trusts the long arc.

“Things change surprisingly little in one year and surprisingly a lot in 10 years,” he says.

On that ten-year horizon, far more change is coming to learning and assessment than the last decade delivered. Learnosity plans to lead it.