AI+HI: Better together
AI is often painted as a threat to jobs, and in many cases it is. As Urik Christensen recently wrote, generative AI is most useful to people who are already good at their jobs. That’s bad news for knowledge roles that are mostly processing because the first and most powerful use of AI is “1000 interns,” able to automate months of research in minutes.
But the other side of AI automating humans out of jobs is a lot more positive. As others have pointed out, collaborating with AI is even more powerful than using it for automation. In that sense, AI isn’t going to take your job, it’s going to take your tasks. Of course we’ll have to deal with the replacement and displacement, but against that, there is a massive opportunity to make our good performers even better through smart use of AI. However, that requires the deliberate deployment and development of HI – Human Intelligence.
In this article we’re going to walk through how we can develop our HI, that form of intelligence which makes AI even more effective.
It’s important to note that in this article we’re talking about large language models (LLM), which include AI such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. To grossly over-simplify, think of LLM as a highly advanced auto complete. It’s read nearly all public online text, turns that into data about which words commonly occur next to each other (and other patterns), and uses this to essentially predict the next word in its output. It is simply about patterns of associations, but on a massive scale. What AI says about itself
I once asked ChatGPT to write about how we work together. It didn’t like the idea, it struggled with the thought of itself in the first person (there’s a doctoral thesis in that alone).
Eventually it came back with this:
Strengths: speed, consistency, automation.
Weaknesses: no deep context, limited creativity, no judgment.
In other words, AI lacks discernment. Data is just the face value of a decision; discernment comes from decades of experience, from odd connections, from a worldview shaped since childhood. AI doesn’t have that. HI does.
Chat GPT would never have had the insight of a TS Eliot:
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
To that we could add “where is the information we have lost in data?”
Where HI shines
This is HI: Recalling a line from a poem read long ago, seeing a connection between two seemingly unrelated things, sensing how someone might feel, appreciating human frailty. Intuition. Ethical judgements. These are not inputs AI can scrape. They are lived and curated, and that curation is made up of things that means something to the person who recalls it, even if it’s subconscious.
What AI does have is scale: it can hold more information based on patterns drawn from billions of examples. But remember, while it does have enormous scale, it lacks discernment. AI will give you all the information on a given topic, but you’re the one who knows which information is important.
So AI will not enslave us, nor will it liberate us. But it can move our thinking and save us a lot of time. Just as industrial revolutions freed good minds from physical labour, this one will free good minds from automatable tasks. Adjustment will be hard, however what’s on the other side is better in ways we can’t quite picture yet.
LLMs become a cognitive amplifier. They can free people from the mechanical work of processing, summarizing, and recalling, so that human effort can shift to interpreting, deciding, and creating.
This is where Managing Your Capacity becomes essential. AI can give you back hours, but it’s your responsibility to spend those hours well. The smartest performers will reinvest that time into high-leverage thinking: deep work, creative problem solving, and team development — not just busyness.
Let’s look at a practical way that AI can increase our reach.
Practice 1: Use the 80/20 Weekly Review
What it is: At the end of each week, reflect on what delivered the most value (top 20%) and what was low impact (bottom 80%).
AI link: Use AI to summarize your calendar, emails, or tasks to identify where your time went, then review with HI judgment.
Then you can start to use AI to truly amplify your HI.
What this looks like
We’ve seen that AI’s ability to automate massive amounts of data collection can increase our capacity. The essence of HI, on the other hand, is creativity. We will create things AI cannot even conceive, because it can’t compute things that don’t exist yet.
Take management training. I’ve been working on leadership development for 30+ years, and for the last 20 years I have run my own leadership and management training company.
I was frustrated a few years ago with the lack of progress that we achieved with business owners in our traditional workshop approach – it was good but I knew it could be better. After trying multiple formats, I concluded that however good the owners were, often the handbrake on their success was the quality of their managers.
In 2018, we developed a new management training system which layers small chunks of content that managers practice and build into daily practice. Our HI insight was that content doesn’t change people, only deliberate and sustained practice does. That’s why we designed a system with layered reinforcement of regular practice: coaching, peer learning, spaced repetition and daily habit building. This system of multiple reinforcement was HI at work – the model didn’t exist anywhere else, there was no one to copy from.
But now AI can take this further:
An AI coach sitting in a manager’s workflow, giving live feedback on where they’re putting their time compared to their priorities, how they’re communicating with their team and prompting accountability. Imagine a live dashboard showing where a manager’s time is actually being spent, and how aligned that is with their top 3 priorities
A bot that can handle the normal range of queries based on a GPT trained on the program’s entire contents as well as the transcripts of all and every coaching and peer group session – and then refers more difficult queries to a live coach.
Proprietary AI trained on an organization’s values and strategies, rather than the “AI slop” that comes from LLMs. This allows for ‘in the moment’ alignment between company values and individual behaviors
In this example, AI handles the scale and proximity. HI adds the judgment, the creativity, the connection. Together, they move performance to another plane.
Here are some practices to develop your HI so you get more out of AI:
Practice 2: structured curiosity
Good prompting is just asking better questions.
Try this: when using an AI tool, start by exploring five different ways to ask the same question. Notice how the answers change. It will help you understand what makes the AI tick, and this habit of reframing your answer for more relevant results is crucial for effective AI use.
Practice 3: Develop judgment
AI gives you information; you decide what matters.
The fundamental skill here is research and fact-checking. You’ve got to be diligent in fact-checking what AI has given you. Here’s what happens if you don’t: https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/deloitte-ai-australia-government-report-hallucinations-technology-290000-refund/
This is where you must practice what we call the Active Mindset. AI will flood you with data, but your HI sets the direction. Intelligent leaders must actively choose where to focus, what to prioritize, and how to lead. Over time, that builds discernment, which AI doesn’t have.
The Human Intelligence tool here is keen skills in researching and fact checking. Insight is something that you’ve filtered, judged, and interpreted.
Practice 4: Confirm Sources
What it is: Require a non-AI source or perspectives before accepting something as fact when using AI-generated content.
Why it matters: Reduces risk of AI hallucinations or overconfidence in a single answer.
AI Tip: You can compare answers using different AI tools, and you can also ask your AI to double check that it hasn’t hallucinated an answer. But ALWAYS verify the information yourself.
Practice 5: Use the “3 Levels of Why” Check
What it is: Improve your critical thinking and research skills when presented with a fact or claim, by asking:
Why is this true?
Why does it matter?
Why might it be wrong?
This is another layer of critical thinking and a practice that engages your brain. It’s a skill that’s transferable to many other areas of life including navigating difficult business decisions and interpreting the world around you.
Practice 6: Invest in emotional intelligence
As AI handles more transactional work, the premium on genuine human connection rises. Lead conversations, coach others, read the room. Those are your differentiators.
While AI can surface trends or present analysis, it cannot coach someone through doubt, help them grow from failure, or sense the nuance in a difficult conversation. These are human-only skills, and the best leaders will develop and double-down on them.
Practice 7: Short weekly one-on-one check-ins with people
What it is: Light, structured check-ins using 3 questions:
What’s going well?
What’s challenging?
Where do you need support?
Why it matters: Keeps communication live without micromanaging.
AI tip: Use an AI note taker to take notes and summarize the sessions so you don’t forget the key points.
Practice 8: Clarity Check – Define ‘What Good Looks Like’
What it is: For any task or project, always define and document the success criteria:
Outcome
Timeline
Quality bar
Why it matters: Prevents misalignment and ambiguity. Clarity is one of the pillars of high-performing teams.
AI tip: You can ask an LLM to draft a template for a project brief and edit it to your specifications. Alternatively, you could jot down a loose draft of the outcome, timeline, and quality bar, and ask an LLM to add structure and formatting to your draft. But only you can define what good looks like – the ultimate discernment.
The point
AI won’t replace humans. But humans who know how to use AI will outperform those who don’t. And organizations who know to deploy AI in partnership with their people will outperform those who don’t.
True performance isn’t just great tools; it's how you use them. AI is a tool. HI is the artisan. The organizations who thrive will invest in the deliberate cultivation of human capability and supercharge it with the right AI. Intelligence, after all, is not static. It is practiced, refined, and activated daily.
The real leap in performance comes from combining the scale of AI with the discernment of HI. This could be the gate to as new level of performance. AI+HI is not just a new way of working. It’s a smarter one.
Author:
Michael S. Ashby PhD is co-founder of Level 10 Leaders, providing management training that sticks. He has been a partner in an international consultancy and had senior roles in the public and private sector before running his own training business. See www.level10leaders.com