Don't outsource the learning to AI research tools

Maria Rosala argues that research produces two things: outputs (themes, reports, recommendations) and learning (what happens inside the people doing the observing). AI is getting better at the first. It cannot produce the second, because the second isn't a deliverable — it's an experience. She backs this with neuroscience: fMRI studies show personal narratives activate social reasoning, emotion, and memory regions of the brain far more than technical text, and listeners' brain activity begins to mirror the storyteller's. A senior researcher she quotes puts it plainly: "We were all there. We all saw it. We all heard it. We all lived it. And those moments were always the fodder for pushing our design forward." A team that hands interviews to an AI gets the report but loses the shared story that moves design decisions.