Welcome to the Deep Dive. We're here to cut through
the noise around the latest research and find
the insights that, well, actually matter for
you. Today, we're digging into something that's
really been making waves this July 2025. It's
being called the MIT article. It's a new preprint
on rxev .org. Right. That's the platform where
researchers put papers out early before the whole
peer review thing. Exactly. And our goal today
isn't just to give you the summary. We want to
explore what this paper really found. especially
this kind of overlooked idea about how we learn
and how we really own what we know. We're going
past the headlines here. Mm -hmm. Looking for
what's truly useful. So let's kick things off.
This MIT article, what's the basic setup? It
compares essays, right? Written using different
tools. That's the core of it. People wrote essays
using either chat GPT or just regular web search
or, you know, only their own brains. It's a pretty
long paper, but definitely interesting. Oh, absolutely.
And it's obviously got educators talking. It
flags some cautions about using LLM's large language
models like chat GPT in the classroom. But it's
also fair to say the study has its limitations
scope -wise. OK, so methodology, how do they
actually do it? They had 54 adults. Yep, 54 adults
each wrote three essays switching up the tools.
And there was this clever bit in the design wasn't
there, about the fourth essay. Right. So if you
started without tech for your first essays, you
then rewrote one of those earlier essays, but
this time with ChatGBT. Oh, OK. And the reverse.
Exactly. If you started with the LLMs, your fourth
essay was done using only your brain, revisiting
a topic you'd used AI for before. And they had
humans and AI grading these essays. And brainwave
measurements? Correct. Both judged the essays.
And yeah, the brainwave data is actually a huge
chunk of the paper. We're talking like, Many
many pages of graphs the source even calls it
fascinating reading fascinating. Yeah because
it shows Visually how our brains are working
right the neural activity changing with the tools
precisely That's often where researchers expect
the big aha moments in that kind of data You'd
think so all those graphs all that detailed brain
activity that must be the main story But digging
into it we found something well pretty surprising.
Mm -hmm. It seems the most important finding
the real kicker wasn't in those brain scans.
He was actually given the least space in the
paper. Here's where it gets really interesting.
It really is. Because that crucial insight, it
came from the short interviews they did with
the writers, specifically asking about their
sense of ownership over the essays they produced.
Just from brief interviews, not the scans. Just
the interviews. And this idea, this ownership
piece, even though it gets minimal ink in the
actual paper, our sources point to it as maybe
the most vital thing we can foster in students,
or really in anyone learning anything. Wow. That's
quite a twist for a scientific paper, isn't it?
If the brainwaves weren't the main story and
it was these interviews about ownership, what
does that actually mean? For you, the listener,
why is this idea of knowledge ownership so critical?
Well, let's unpack that. In education, a major
goal is always transfer. You learn something
in class. Right, like a math concept or a writing
skill. Exactly. And transfer means you can actually
use that knowledge or skill outside the classroom.
In a different situation, maybe at work, maybe
just in life. For that transfer to happen effectively,
our sources say you need two things, competence
and ownership. Okay, let's take confidence first.
That sounds fairly straightforward. It mostly
is. Competence is basically knowing what you
need to know and being able to do what you need
to do. Like knowing the facts, being able to
perform the steps. Pretty much. It's a brain
activity, sure, but your environment matters
too. And it grows, you know, as you learn more,
gather more info. Got it. So that's competence.
What about the other piece, the ownership part?
That sounds... Deeper. It is deeper. Ownership
is when that knowledge isn't just something you
can recall, but it's truly deeply integrated
into your thinking. It literally changes how
you perceive the world differently. You start
seeing connections you didn't see before. So
it's not just having the information, it's internalizing
it, making it part of you. Exactly. When you
own knowledge, you become critical of it. You
can judge if it's enough to solve a problem.
You can adapt it. You can even generate new knowledge
based on what you already own. It's active. It's
transformative. It's not just storage and retrieval.
OK, that makes sense. It's like the difference
between knowing the recipe and truly understanding
cooking. That's a great analogy. And when you
look at generative AI through this lens, this
ownership lens, it becomes clear that AI is no
different from any other instructional tool or
method. Wait, say that again. No different. That's
a big claim. People are treating AI as this completely
revolutionary, maybe dangerous thing in education.
I understand why, but from the perspective of
ownership, the tool itself isn't inherently good
or bad. So the focus shifts. Completely. It's
not about banning chat GPT or requiring it. It's
about how it affects that sense of ownership.
Precisely. Can generative AI be used to whip
up an essay where the student feels zero ownership
and learns very little? Yeah, we see that. But,
and this is the crucial point, that same lack
of ownership can happen just as easily with,
say, traditional digital information sources.
Think copy pasting from Wikipedia without really
understanding it. Right, or just stringing together
quotes. Or even, as the source points out, with
learning done with a brain only. How so? Think
about cramming for an exam. You memorize facts.
You might even ace the test. Yeah. Competence,
right? Uh -huh. But a week later, It's gone.
You never owned it. It wasn't integrated. It
was just temporary recall. OK, I see. So the
tool isn't the issue, the outcome, the ownership
is. That's the core takeaway. If students, or
again, anyone learning, leaves a course or finishes
a learning experience without a sense of ownership
of the curriculum, then they have not learned
what they needed to learn. Regardless of the
grade, regardless of the tools used. Exactly.
The technology is secondary to that deeper goal
of creating owned knowledge, which Really, this
raises an important question, I think, for everyone
listening. If the real measure of learning isn't
just competence, but this deeper sense of ownership,
how does that challenge your own approach? How
you learn things or even how you figure out if
you've really learned something. That's definitely
something that you want as you go through your
day, taking in information from us, from articles,
whatever. Think about that. What does it actually
take to make knowledge your own, not just to
know it? What really stands out to way from this
deep dive today?