How Artificial Intelligence Can Stifle Or Enhance Leadership Wisdom

Forbes

22-07-2025

Dr. Gregory Stebbins is the Founder and Master Coach at PeopleSavvy. He is a member of the American Psychological Association.
Now that artificial intelligence is increasingly woven into the fabric of our daily intellectual activity, we are at a crossroads where the very tools designed to augment human potential are actually transforming how we think, learn and become wiser.
Recent research emanating from MIT presents a chilling narrative: AI is dumbing us down. But paradoxically, when used judiciously in combination with human thought and revision, the very same tools could be a doorway to increased wisdom acquisition.
The Cognitive Cost Of AI Reliance
The MIT study conducted by Nataliya Kosmyna presents solid evidence that should make us think. In the study, three groups of Ivy League students composed essays—one group utilizing Large Language Models, another using traditional search engines and a third relying on their own knowledge alone—and the contrasts were striking. EEG recordings showed that "brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support." The students working with AI not only engaged fewer neural processes but also produced "statistically homogenous essays within each topic, showing significantly less deviation compared to the other groups."
This homogenization of thought is not merely a matter of intellectual concern; it is a sign of a deeper shift in the manner in which we generate and work through ideas. The students who had employed AI were more likely to forget what they had written and felt less ownership of their work. In essence, they had outsourced not just the writing work, but even the process of thinking.
Transcendence: From Individual To Collective Wisdom
To understand the deeper significance of this intellectual change, we have to consider what we sacrifice as we surrender intellectual work. Recent research on Abraham Maslow's extended hierarchy of needs shows that human development peaks not in self-actualization but in self-transcendence. This is our ability to move beyond personal interest toward higher understanding and mutual gain.
Investigations of young people's orientations to transcendence have revealed a preference for personal rather than communal transcendence. People are capable of differentiating between personal advancement and the advancement of others, and they seldom prefer the latter. This observation takes on additional significance against the backdrop of AI use: If we already lean toward individualistic, as opposed to communal, wisdom, and AI continues to diminish our cognitive participation, then we become at risk of creating a double block to authentic intellectual and spiritual development.
The Emancipating Power Of Reflection And Editing
But this story does not necessarily culminate in an intellectual wasteland. The answer is not to abandon AI entirely but to understand how to use it as a tool for added reflection rather than cognitive replacement. By applying AI to generate early ideas or initial drafts and then reflecting on and editing them, we create space for more intensive exploration of the material than would otherwise be possible.
A thoughtful editing process turns AI assistance into a catalyst rather than a crutch. When we evaluate content generated by AI, we are doing a series of cognitively stimulating activities: We evaluate the logic and coherence of the argument, find gaps in the argument, evaluate whether tone and style are suitable and add our own experience. This process can even enhance our understanding of a topic by forcing us to think through concepts from various perspectives.
Wisdom Through Dialectical Engagement
The procedure of using AI followed by human editing gives rise to what can be thought of as a dialectical approach to knowledge creation. The AI provides the thesis—a first cut at ideas based on the processing of huge quantities of data. The human editor provides the antithesis, incorporating critical review, deep understanding and contextual discernment. The final result of the edited work is a synthesis that combines the depth of AI processing with the depth of human reflection.
This is a parallel process to the development of wisdom. Wisdom is the ability of an individual to make sound decisions and find answers to difficult and important life questions, covering complex problems of everyday life and interpersonal relationships. Wisdom is not imparted through passive absorption of information but through active assimilation of ideas, analytical examination of sources and combining knowledge with experience. In reflecting on and editing AI material, we are doing all these simultaneously
Implications For Leadership Education And Development
This understanding has sweeping implications for how we structure leadership learning and professional development. Rather than banning AI or embracing it without bounds, schools and workplaces should be focused on developing robust editing and critical thinking skills. Students need to learn to use AI as a starting point for research but not the destination for analysis.
The goal is to capture what the MIT study found had been lost: true cognitive involvement, memory formation and thought ownership. When we study AI content, we regain these core elements of learning while still benefiting from the capacity of AI to process and integrate large amounts of information.
The Turn Ahead: Mindful Cognitive Engagement
Transcendence literature describes true human development as transcending self-actualization to genuine concern for the well-being and wisdom of the group. (For further reading, see Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, Scott Barry Kaufman and others.) Regarding AI use, this means using these technologies for more than individual convenience but in a manner that optimizes their potential to be useful to human knowledge and understanding.
This loop of AI-assisted drafting and subsequent reflective editing is a model for such utilization. It allows us to embrace the computational strengths of AI without losing—in fact, enhancing—our uniquely human abilities of reflective critique, creative synthesis and wisdom generation.
The future of leadership wisdom in the era of AI rests not on the avoidance of these powerful tools but on their mastery in a way that strengthens rather than undermines our capacity for deep thinking, genuine understanding and higher insight. The process of editing, well-conceived and carried out, teaches us how to do this.
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