Out-Human AI: Why the Age of Artificial Intelligence Needs More Reflective Leaders
Ask any student today and AI can hand them an answer before they've finished forming the question. That speed feels like progress. But what if the very thing making school easier is quietly making young minds weaker?
AI is a genuine multiplier of human capacity — but only for people who know how to use it. Left unchecked, especially in education, it risks hollowing out the strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking it was supposed to support. The task in front of leaders, educators, and parents today is not to outsmart AI, but to out-human it — and reflective practices like journaling are how we build the muscle to do that.
I didn't finish college in four years — it took me seven. I started BA Language and Literature at the University of the Philippines Baguio, moved campuses and changed my major to BA Communication at Los Baños, then transferred a year before graduation to Brigham Young University–Hawaii to pursue a BS in Hospitality and Tourism Management. There was no AI then. There was the library. Hours of reading books, articles, and studies, and just as many hours with mentors, tutors, and coaches to actually understand what I was reading. Writing took forever. But my mind was being exercised daily — forced outside the box, then applied through experience so the learning would stick.
This past February, I finished my MBA through the Ateneo-Regis program — this time, with AI fully present in the academe. The contrast was striking. AI sped up my research, pointed me to better references, cleaned up my grammar, and doubled my productivity. It even sharpened how I communicate. The tool itself isn't the problem. What's changed is how much discipline it now takes to make sure the thinking is still mine.
This shows up even among adults who should know better. A 2025 Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon study followed 319 knowledge workers who use tools like ChatGPT or Copilot weekly, examining 936 real examples of how they actually used AI on the job. The pattern: critical thinking didn't disappear, it relocated. Instead of gathering information and solving problems themselves, workers shifted into verifying AI's output and stewarding the final result — checking rather than originating. And the more confidence someone had in the AI's ability to do a task, the less critical effort they invested (Lee et al., 2025). The lesson for students is the same one adults are only now learning: the discipline isn't in refusing AI's answers, it's in developing the rigor to verify them rather than rubber-stamp them.
I've seen this same instinct play out in leadership, not just in school. For over ten years, I've noticed that leaders tend to reach for AI first — asking it for suggestions or instructions on how to do things, before they've looked at what they already have. So I trained my own people to reverse the order: start with internal research, using the actual, factual data available inside the company — our own performance — before going anywhere else. Collaborate on it, discuss the analysis as a team, and set benchmarks from that. Only then do we bring in outside data, and at that point, it's not replacing our thinking — it's fortifying it with reliable stories and evidence from beyond the organization. We apply this specifically in HR, when structuring payroll; in accounting, when working through tax and VAT questions; and in technology, where the real challenge is coping with how quickly new practices need to be adopted. In every case, the internal analysis comes first — AI supplements it, it doesn't originate it.
Research backs this up, with an important nuance. Alt and Raichel (2020) followed 97 undergraduate students through a 13-week reflective journaling practice, measuring their metacognitive awareness before and after with a validated inventory. The key finding: journaling only built self-regulated thinking when it was guided. Students who responded to structured prompts showed real growth in their ability to monitor and adjust their own thinking, while students who journaled freely, without prompts, tended to just describe what happened to them that day, with little reflective depth. In other words, journaling has to be practiced deliberately, the same way using AI well has to be practiced deliberately — neither one trains you automatically just by being present in your life.
The fair objection here is that the old way wasn't better — it was just slower, and often less accessible. Not every student has a library, a mentor, or seven years to figure out their major. AI genuinely democratizes access to knowledge that used to require time, money, or proximity to the right people. That's true, and it matters. But speed and access solve a different problem than depth does. A student can now reach an answer faster than ever and still never learn how to think — and that gap doesn't close on its own just because information got cheaper. Efficiency without reflection produces intelligence without wisdom.
The obligation, then, sits with the adults in the room — parents, educators, leaders — to teach young people how to use AI without becoming dependent on it, starting early. Journaling is one of the most practical ways to do that: it's low-cost, it scales down to any age, and it directly trains the habits AI shortcuts — double-checking, self-awareness, and honest reflection before decision-making. As leaders, the choice in front of us now is whether to get wiser about combining internal knowledge, earned through experience and reflection, with external knowledge, generated at scale by AI. Handled with care, that combination is a real multiplier. Handled carelessly, it's just outsourcing our thinking to something that was never meant to think for us.
References:
Alt, D., & Raichel, N. (2020). Reflective journaling and metacognitive awareness: Insights from a longitudinal study in higher education. Reflective Practice, 21(2), 145–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2020.1716708
Baikie, K. A., & Wilhelm, K. (2005). Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11(5), 338–346.
Child Mind Institute. (2025, January 28). The power of journaling: What science says about the benefits for mental health and well-being. https://childmind.org/blog/the-power-of-journaling/
Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025). The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: Self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713778
Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.
Prosper. (n.d.). Journaling to increase self-awareness. University of Liverpool. https://prosper.liverpool.ac.uk/postdoc-resources/reflect/journaling-to-increase-self-awareness/
RAND Corporation. (2026, March 17). Student use of AI for homework rises as concerns grow about critical thinking skills. https://www.rand.org/news/press/2026/03/student-use-of-ai-for-homework-rises-as-concerns-grow.html
Soundar-Shah, P., & Kestigian, A. (2026, June 23). We have never taught critical thinking. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/06/23/we-have-never-taught-critical-thinking-opinion
AI is a genuine multiplier of human capacity — but only for people who know how to use it. Left unchecked, especially in education, it risks hollowing out the strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking it was supposed to support. The task in front of leaders, educators, and parents today is not to outsmart AI, but to out-human it — and reflective practices like journaling are how we build the muscle to do that.
I didn't finish college in four years — it took me seven. I started BA Language and Literature at the University of the Philippines Baguio, moved campuses and changed my major to BA Communication at Los Baños, then transferred a year before graduation to Brigham Young University–Hawaii to pursue a BS in Hospitality and Tourism Management. There was no AI then. There was the library. Hours of reading books, articles, and studies, and just as many hours with mentors, tutors, and coaches to actually understand what I was reading. Writing took forever. But my mind was being exercised daily — forced outside the box, then applied through experience so the learning would stick.
This past February, I finished my MBA through the Ateneo-Regis program — this time, with AI fully present in the academe. The contrast was striking. AI sped up my research, pointed me to better references, cleaned up my grammar, and doubled my productivity. It even sharpened how I communicate. The tool itself isn't the problem. What's changed is how much discipline it now takes to make sure the thinking is still mine.
AI can spoon-feed thinking before it happens.
When AI can expound on a topic faster and more fluently than a young mind can yet manage on its own, the temptation is to accept the answer rather than double-check it. That's not a technology problem — it's a discipline problem. Strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking are all built through friction: the struggle of not knowing yet. Remove the friction too early, and the capacity never fully forms.This shows up even among adults who should know better. A 2025 Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon study followed 319 knowledge workers who use tools like ChatGPT or Copilot weekly, examining 936 real examples of how they actually used AI on the job. The pattern: critical thinking didn't disappear, it relocated. Instead of gathering information and solving problems themselves, workers shifted into verifying AI's output and stewarding the final result — checking rather than originating. And the more confidence someone had in the AI's ability to do a task, the less critical effort they invested (Lee et al., 2025). The lesson for students is the same one adults are only now learning: the discipline isn't in refusing AI's answers, it's in developing the rigor to verify them rather than rubber-stamp them.
AI is a multiplier, not a substitute.
A multiplier needs something to multiply. AI can make school requirements easier to complete, but it's still the student's obligation to make the learning personal — to connect it to lived experience, apply it, and only then let AI supplement it with external data that validates or extends the point. Used that way, AI doesn't replace understanding; it deepens it. Used the other way, it just replaces the appearance of understanding.I've seen this same instinct play out in leadership, not just in school. For over ten years, I've noticed that leaders tend to reach for AI first — asking it for suggestions or instructions on how to do things, before they've looked at what they already have. So I trained my own people to reverse the order: start with internal research, using the actual, factual data available inside the company — our own performance — before going anywhere else. Collaborate on it, discuss the analysis as a team, and set benchmarks from that. Only then do we bring in outside data, and at that point, it's not replacing our thinking — it's fortifying it with reliable stories and evidence from beyond the organization. We apply this specifically in HR, when structuring payroll; in accounting, when working through tax and VAT questions; and in technology, where the real challenge is coping with how quickly new practices need to be adopted. In every case, the internal analysis comes first — AI supplements it, it doesn't originate it.
Journaling builds the mental toughness AI can't.
I've kept a journal since I was seven years old. Writing experiences, feelings, and thoughts intentionally is what develops self-awareness, empathy, and real observation of the world around you. It's also what trains the mind to double-check facts and gather evidence before believing or deciding anything — the exact instinct AI-dependence erodes if it's never built in the first place. For leaders especially, reflection isn't a soft skill on the side; it's the discipline that makes everything else trustworthy.Research backs this up, with an important nuance. Alt and Raichel (2020) followed 97 undergraduate students through a 13-week reflective journaling practice, measuring their metacognitive awareness before and after with a validated inventory. The key finding: journaling only built self-regulated thinking when it was guided. Students who responded to structured prompts showed real growth in their ability to monitor and adjust their own thinking, while students who journaled freely, without prompts, tended to just describe what happened to them that day, with little reflective depth. In other words, journaling has to be practiced deliberately, the same way using AI well has to be practiced deliberately — neither one trains you automatically just by being present in your life.
The fair objection here is that the old way wasn't better — it was just slower, and often less accessible. Not every student has a library, a mentor, or seven years to figure out their major. AI genuinely democratizes access to knowledge that used to require time, money, or proximity to the right people. That's true, and it matters. But speed and access solve a different problem than depth does. A student can now reach an answer faster than ever and still never learn how to think — and that gap doesn't close on its own just because information got cheaper. Efficiency without reflection produces intelligence without wisdom.
The obligation, then, sits with the adults in the room — parents, educators, leaders — to teach young people how to use AI without becoming dependent on it, starting early. Journaling is one of the most practical ways to do that: it's low-cost, it scales down to any age, and it directly trains the habits AI shortcuts — double-checking, self-awareness, and honest reflection before decision-making. As leaders, the choice in front of us now is whether to get wiser about combining internal knowledge, earned through experience and reflection, with external knowledge, generated at scale by AI. Handled with care, that combination is a real multiplier. Handled carelessly, it's just outsourcing our thinking to something that was never meant to think for us.
References:
Alt, D., & Raichel, N. (2020). Reflective journaling and metacognitive awareness: Insights from a longitudinal study in higher education. Reflective Practice, 21(2), 145–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2020.1716708
Baikie, K. A., & Wilhelm, K. (2005). Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11(5), 338–346.
Child Mind Institute. (2025, January 28). The power of journaling: What science says about the benefits for mental health and well-being. https://childmind.org/blog/the-power-of-journaling/
Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025). The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: Self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713778
Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.
Prosper. (n.d.). Journaling to increase self-awareness. University of Liverpool. https://prosper.liverpool.ac.uk/postdoc-resources/reflect/journaling-to-increase-self-awareness/
RAND Corporation. (2026, March 17). Student use of AI for homework rises as concerns grow about critical thinking skills. https://www.rand.org/news/press/2026/03/student-use-of-ai-for-homework-rises-as-concerns-grow.html
Soundar-Shah, P., & Kestigian, A. (2026, June 23). We have never taught critical thinking. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/06/23/we-have-never-taught-critical-thinking-opinion
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