Learning and Unlearning with AI: Skills That Outlast Tools - Graziela Tonin

A professor on what happens when students stop thinking for themselves

What does it actually mean to unlearn something, and why does that question matter as much as learning new skills right now? With Graziela Tonin I talk about how universities, companies, and individuals are struggling to find their footing in a world where AI can write code, run tests, and sometimes outperform human decision-making. We get into the research showing that students who offload thinking to AI tools lose cognitive capacity rather than gain it, and what that means for how knowledge should be taught and shared. I keep coming back to her point that the rarest and most durable skills are not the technical ones: critical thinking, ethical behavior, knowing how to work in a team, and knowing how to learn at all. She also reminds me that the environment does not need us, we need it, and that is probably the sharpest piece of unlearning any of us could do right now.

"The environment don't need us. We need the environment. The environment could survive without you." - Graziela Tonin

Graziela Tonin is Associate Dean at Insper and Professor in Executive Education. She is XP 2026 and SUSTAIN co-chair, with 15+ years in education and consulting in Agile and Software Engineering.

Highlights:

• Students who wrote essays with ChatGPT showed the weakest brain connectivity in EEG measurements and failed to retain the material afterward, according to a 2025 MIT Media Lab study cited in the episode.
• 95% of companies investing in AI report no measurable return, because AI adoption is driven by hype rather than connected, governance-level strategy across all layers of the organization.
• Offloading tasks entirely to AI rather than treating it as a collaborative partner transfers responsibility away from the human and blocks genuine skill development.
• The disappearance of junior software engineering roles due to AI creates a pipeline problem: without junior engineers gaining experience, there is no path to producing senior engineers.
• Ethical behavior, critical thinking, and the ability to learn how to learn will outlast any specific tool, language, or framework as the durable competencies for professionals.

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