Economist Kevin Bryan Open-Sources His 'Progress' Course: Slides, Syllabus, and AI Teaching Assistant
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-09-30
University of Toronto economist Kevin Bryan has released all materials from the first three classes of his 2026 'Progress: How to Get Big Things Done' course, free to the public:
- Content: historical views of progress, the Industrial Revolution, and whether science is fundamental — blending economic theory, history of technology, philosophy, and history of thought; one of the first courses of its kind, taught in three programs in 2026.
- Open resources: slides with after-class notes plus the syllabus, with permission to build on unpublished materials.
- AI teaching assistant: paired AI-driven quizzes via All Day TA, his 2023 'Virtual TA' project spun out as a company in 2024, now used by universities in 30+ countries and claiming weekly per-student knowledge tracking.
- Reading list: Sutton's The Bitter Lesson, Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness (intro + ch.1), Wigner's The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics, Kaplan et al.'s Scaling Laws, and Bubeck et al.'s Early Science Acceleration.
A valuable open resource for anyone studying technological progress or AI in education.
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