Artificial intelligence is changing the way we live, work, and think. But what matters most is not just what AI can do, but how we, as humans, choose to engage with it. Over the past years, in my work across financial services, academia, and nonprofit initiatives, I’ve come to see one truth: AI is not just a tool. It is becoming a partner, one that extends our capacity to act. Reid Hoffman calls this AI Agency and it requires us to respond with greater human agency of our own.
We recently had the chance to reflect on this at the panel “AI as a Thinking Partner: Are You Asking the Right Questions?”, organized by the HR Smart Community, where our colleague, Steliana Moraru, Head of Growth Financial Services, joined other professionals to explore how AI is reshaping the way we think, learn, and lead.
Systemic Thinking: Seeing the Whole Board
Systemic thinking is the ability to see connections, patterns, and interdependencies rather than isolated tasks. In the age of AI, this mindset is essential. AI doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it interacts with people, organizations, and institutions in ways that can amplify both opportunities and risks. In our work at TotalSoft, for example, integrating AI into compliance workflows is not simply a technical upgrade. It shifts how clients perceive trust, how regulators react, and how employees redefine their roles. When we look at AI systemically, we stop asking only “What can this model deliver?” and start asking “What happens when we give AI a role, even partial agency, inside a broader ecosystem?”. That shift helps us design not just answers, but systems of inquiry, structures that can adapt and learn over time.
From Answers to Inquiry
One of the most important changes AI demands of us is moving from the pursuit of static answers to the design of adaptive inquiries. In finance, things don’t always move quickly, but they do shift in profound ways: new regulations, global shocks, client expectations. A single “right” answer can quickly become irrelevant. That’s why, when expanding financial software across multiple markets, we don’t look for one fixed solution. Instead, we work with our teams to build adaptive systems, ones that can learn, integrate, and evolve. The value lies not in certainty, but in resilience.
The Cognitive Muscles of the Future
If AI is a thinking partner, what skills do we need to cultivate to keep pace? Our colleague mentioned during the panel that she sees three core muscles: adaptability, critical inquiry, and curiosity. These are the traits that allow us to use AI as a collaborator rather than just a faster calculator.
She sees this every day in her teaching at the University of Bucharest. The students who thrive aren’t those who memorize answers but those who keep questioning, reframing, and connecting dots across disciplines. When they ask, “How would this decision look in another country?” or “What if we tested this idea in a nonprofit instead of a bank?”, they are practicing the very skills that will keep them relevant in a world shaped by AI.
Recognizing the AI-Augmented Professional
So how do you recognize someone who is truly AI-augmented? Their work doesn’t just move faster, it goes deeper. I’ve seen colleagues in product marketing use AI not only to draft campaigns but also to test cultural scenarios, anticipate client behaviors, and add their own strategic insights on top. The result doesn’t feel mechanical; it feels amplified. These are people who treat AI as a partner with agency, not just a machine that executes commands.
Discernment in the Age of Infinite Outputs
But with AI comes a new challenge: discernment. AI is capable of generating infinite outputs, many of them sounding confident, even when they’re wrong. The danger is not in the mistakes themselves, but in our tendency to equate confidence with truth.
Here, it is important to test outputs where we already know the answer, to pause before acting to avoid automation bias, and to bring other perspectives into the discussion.
Discernment is not about rejecting AI. It is about remembering our role as sense-makers. Even when AI has agency, humans must remain the ones deciding what truly matters.
The Human Role in the AI Age
The rise of AI is not the end of human relevance; it is a call to step into a different kind of leadership. Our task is not to out-compute the machines, but to design systems of inquiry, exercise discernment, and cultivate the cognitive muscles that AI cannot replace.
The future belongs to those who can balance AI’s agency with human judgment, creativity, and ethics. That balance is what turns technology from a tool into a true partner—and it’s what will define the leaders of the next decade.
