When Models Know More Than They Can Explain: Quantifying Knowledge Transfer in Human-AI Collaboration

2025-06-05

AI Summary

This study investigates whether improvements in AI models’ reasoning capabilities naturally enhance their effectiveness as teachers—specifically, their ability to convey understandable and transferable knowledge to humans in human-AI collaboration. Method: We propose KITE, a novel evaluation framework that quantifies the causal impact of model explanations on humans’ subsequent independent problem-solving performance via a two-stage behavioral experiment (N=118). Contribution/Results: We provide the first systematic definition and empirical measurement of human-AI knowledge transfer efficacy, revealing only weak correlation between standard model benchmark performance and actual knowledge transfer—evidencing a “knowledge-rich but explanation-poor” phenomenon. We identify key behavioral strategy factors governing successful knowledge transfer and demonstrate that explainability and pedagogical alignment must be explicitly optimized. To support reproducibility and further research, we open-source the KITE toolkit—including implementation code, annotated datasets, and standardized evaluation protocols.

Technology Category

Humans and AI: Explainable AI (XAI) for Human UnderstandingKnowledge Representation and Reasoning: Knowledge EngineeringPhilosophy and Ethics of AI: Accountability, Interpretability & Explainability

Application Category

Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactionsSearch and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Search Tool Learning with LLM: Teaching LLMs to invoke search and make use of retrieved informationEconomics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

Recent advancements in AI reasoning have driven substantial improvements across diverse tasks. A critical open question is whether these improvements also yields better knowledge transfer: the ability of models to communicate reasoning in ways humans can understand, apply, and learn from. To investigate this, we introduce Knowledge Integration and Transfer Evaluation (KITE), a conceptual and experimental framework for Human-AI knowledge transfer capabilities and conduct the first large-scale human study (N=118) explicitly designed to measure it. In our two-phase setup, humans first ideate with an AI on problem-solving strategies, then independently implement solutions, isolating model explanations' influence on human understanding. Our findings reveal that although model benchmark performance correlates with collaborative outcomes, this relationship is notably inconsistent, featuring significant outliers, indicating that knowledge transfer requires dedicated optimization. Our analysis identifies behavioral and strategic factors mediating successful knowledge transfer. We release our code, dataset, and evaluation framework to support future work on communicatively aligned models.

Problem

• Measuring AI-human knowledge transfer effectiveness
• Assessing model explanation impact on human understanding
• Identifying factors for successful knowledge transfer optimization

Innovation

• Introducing KITE framework for knowledge transfer
• Two-phase human study isolating AI explanations
• Behavioral factors mediating successful knowledge transfer