Our Thinking, Judgment, and Humanity Matter More Than Ever

Last night, I went to the beautiful Boston Public Library for HubSpot’s launch of Kipp Bodnar’s new book, Loop.

As a fellow author, I loved hearing about his writing process and how an important idea evolved into a book.

I also left thinking about three things Kipp said about AI. While he was talking primarily about marketing, I think all three apply much more broadly to how we work and lead.

1. “AI won’t replace marketers. But marketers using AI will replace those who don’t.”

You could replace “marketers” with almost any profession.

AI won’t replace coaches. But coaches who know how to use AI will have capabilities that those who don’t. The same is true for lawyers, HR professionals, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

People who learn to use AI well can research faster, analyze more information, test ideas, challenge their thinking, and accomplish things that previously took significantly more time.

And the technology is moving incredibly quickly. The longer we wait to experiment with it, the greater the risk of being left behind.

2. Brains first. Tools second.

Kipp shared another line that stayed with me: “Brains first. Tools second.”

AI makes it incredibly easy to produce something. A strategy. A presentation. A blog post. A performance review. An analysis.

But producing something and thinking are not the same thing.

AI is exceptionally good at generating plausible answers based on patterns in enormous amounts of existing material. That can pull us toward the conventional, the familiar, and the average.

If we start with the tool before doing our own thinking, we risk outsourcing the very part of the process that makes our contribution valuable.

What do I think? What am I noticing that others might not? What is missing from the AI’s answer? What do I know about this situation or these people that AI doesn’t?

Use AI to expand your thinking, challenge it, sharpen it, and accelerate it. But bring your brain first.

3. AI is not a substitute for judgment.

AI can give us an answer remarkably quickly. And because that answer is often articulate, detailed, and confident, it can be tempting to assume it knows better than we do.

It doesn’t.

AI doesn’t eliminate the need for human judgment. It makes good judgment more important.

We still have to decide whether the information is accurate, whether the recommendation makes sense in this context, what’s missing, and whether an action that is technically possible is actually wise.

Sometimes we need to say, “No, that’s not right.”

The opportunity isn’t to think less

It’s to use these extraordinary tools to think better, move faster, and do things we couldn’t do before, while becoming even more intentional about the human capabilities we don’t want to outsource.

That was my biggest takeaway from last night. The more capable AI becomes, the more important it is that we don’t outsource what makes us valuable: our thinking, our judgment and our humanity.