New Google paper finds that students who practiced with AI teammates that push back wrote better business plans than students using normal AI tools.

Skills like critical thinking and collaboration matter for starting a business, but they are hard to teach and hard to practice at scale.

They extended Vantage, a Google Research platform where students solve business tasks in chat with AI teammates run by Gemini 3.1 Pro. The teammates pitch flawed ideas, disagree, and state false claims, but never do the task for the student.

In a trial with 52 students, the Vantage group averaged 67.6% on the final business plan, versus 60.5% for controls using standard AI tools. Students who did 5 to 6 practice tasks averaged 79.7%, while those who did none scored 59.3%.

If you build AI for learning, make it a teammate that challenges people, not an assistant that finishes their work.