A new study from online tutoring platform Wiingy offers a useful corrective to the prevailing narrative about American learners: yes, they want to master artificial intelligence – but they want to master sourdough more.
The study, which analyzed more than 6.7 million monthly Google searches tied to clear learning intent across 54 subjects, ranked the 25 most-pursued skills in America. Cooking topped the list with 678,530 average monthly searches. Artificial intelligence came in third, behind project management.
For anyone steeped in business school discourse – where AI literacy has become something close to a moral imperative – the numbers are a mild rebuke. Swimming (470,990 searches) outpaced Python (439,520). Piano, singing, drums, and violin all cracked the top 25. Music as a category represented 11.4% of total search volume, more than sports and languages combined.
TECH STILL LEADS BY CATEGORY – JUST NOT BY THE MEASURE YOU’D EXPECT
Technology still dominated by category share. The six tech skills in the ranking – AI, Python, cybersecurity, AI tools, data science, and Java – collectively accounted for 33% of total search volume, the largest share of any category. Business skills, led by accounting and project management, added another 20%.
But the broader picture is one of Americans pursuing a wider range of skills than the AI-obsessed headlines suggest. Wiingy’s methodology, which filtered out casual queries in favor of searches indicating genuine educational commitment – courses, certifications, tutoring, degrees – found that professional upskilling and personal enrichment are happening in parallel, not in competition. The data was collected in 2025.
The findings have limits: search volume on Google is a proxy for interest, not enrollment or completion, and Wiingy is a tutoring marketplace with a commercial interest in the findings. But as a snapshot of what Americans were reaching for last year, it’s a more complicated picture than “everyone is learning to prompt.”
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