AINEWS
Matt Webb used ChatGPT to learn the rotation math his new AR app needs. One maker's story is an anecdote. The question is what would make it a pattern.
Matt Webb had a problem. His augmented reality app, Galactic Compass 2, depends on a piece of math he could not crack. Quaternions, the four-dimensional numbers that handle 3D rotation without the gimbal lock that trips up simpler formulas, refused to stick in his head. He had tried the obvious routes: books, and a mathematician friend. None of them got him there.
So Webb sat down with ChatGPT. He did not ask it to write the code.
"I didn't get it to write the code, but I got it to educate me," Webb wrote on his blog, explaining how a chatbot helped him learn the math his new AR mode needs. The math is the part he kept; the rote translation into app code is the part he delegated.
Simon Willison picked up the quote the same day, republishing it as evidence that a chatbot can teach what books and friends could not. The construction pushes back against the assumption that the chatbot did the work Webb could not.
The Galactic Compass 2 release on 21 August 2026 is the receipt that Webb finished the work. A shipped AR mode, built on the rotation math he could not previously crack, is a different kind of evidence than a blog post.
Webb is not claiming that AI tutoring works for everyone, that ChatGPT is a better teacher than a human tutor, or that his experience generalizes. His takeaway is narrower: "Learning doesn't stop just because thinking is outsourced to AI," he writes. "It pushes me to learn more. I like that as an outcome."
Webb's claim has a built-in test. It only holds if the maker reaches for harder learning, not easier. If AI tutoring lets people skip past the difficult parts of a craft, the "learns more" claim is wrong. If it lets them cross into a more specific, more demanding corner of the craft, the claim holds. Webb's quaternions are the second case: a piece of math he had been avoiding, that the chatbot's patience made accessible, that the app now depends on.
Webb's own account supplies the counterweight. AI tutoring does not work because the model is uniquely brilliant. It works because the model is patient, conversational, and willing to explain the same sub-step in a different shape until it lands. That is closer to "AI is more available than your friends" than to "AI is smarter than your friends."
Webb's anecdote is one maker, one piece of niche math, one AI tool. The question it cannot answer is whether a maker who did not already want to learn quaternions would reach for the same tool. Galactic Compass 2 is in the App Store today, built on math he says he could not previously learn.