Are you outsourcing your intelligence to AI?

When my business went through a difficult season, I turned to my friend, ChatGPT. I asked the Large Language Model (LLM) for insights and advice on how to leverage my strengths and pivot my business as budgets for women’s leadership programs shifted downward. When the well-framed answers started pouring in, I didn’t pause to check in with myself and ask if my opinion diverged from ChatGPT or whether this advice aligned with my values and mission. In fact, I didn’t even think to ask ChatGPT what might work in my favor if I just stayed the course.

I was a “LLeMming”: a term Lila Shroff uses to describe compulsive AI users in The Atlantic. Lila Shroff shares that just as the adoption of writing reduced our memory and calculators devalued basic arithmetic skills, AI could be atrophying our critical thinking skills.

A MODERN LEADERSHIP BLIND SPOT

In my TEDx talk, I share that we are all susceptible to a cognitive bias called authority bias, which means we are heavily influenced by the opinions and judgments of perceived authority figures. This could be accepting your boss’s input without critical evaluation, or it could be blind trust that ChatGPT always provides the right answers.

Large Language Models offer us 24/7 access to advice and guidance. It’s easy to fall into an authority bias toward LLMs because not only do tools like ChatGPT answer all questions with an astonishingly confident tone, but outsourcing our decision-making is convenient. Also known as Cognitive Offloading, the “outsourcing of cognition” helps people manage mental load, memory demands, and decision burden. There is also discomfort and effort involved in turning inward (and checking in is not quick, nor are the answers obvious). 

Given the fact that LLMs are not well-rounded, critical-minded people, this can be dangerous.

LLMs have been known to hallucinate by making up data or resources, reduce cognitive problem-solving skills, and hinder spontaneous creativity. It also has a bias for positivity, which means it can validate or support even the worst of ideas. This bias can be especially powerful in making you drift off track as a leader.

Here’s what to do when you realize you’re outsourcing your thinking (whether to an LLM or to a person).

GET CURIOUS ABOUT YOUR MOTIVATIONS

When I sought out ChatGPT to help me make some business pivots at the beginning of 2025, it seemed like a safe place to go to express my concerns and get advice without judgment. What I was really seeking was a sense of certainty in an uncertain time. It’s tempting to default to our favorite LLM when uncertainty hits. One of my clients, a founder in the events industry, was feeling stuck in a creative strategy. She wanted to offload some of the uncertainty she was feeling around her marketing strategy, and so she asked ChatGPT to give her feedback. It gave her a host of strategies to try. When she asked my opinion, I asked her: Does the strategy align with your values? Does it move you and your team closer to your goals and objectives? Most importantly, does this recommendation energize you, or does it drain you?

If you are wondering whether or not to use a strategy or idea suggested by AI, you can ask yourself these same questions. You can also start to take track of your own tendencies, like how frequently you turn to your favorite LLM to solve a problem, or even validate your choices and beliefs. Are you: Trying to eliminate uncertainty? Seeking validation? Craving alternatives? Or looking for novel ideas?

When you notice why you turn to your favorite LLM for advice, it becomes easier to slow down and ensure you are using it for the right reasons. 

TRUST YOURSELF FIRST

For over three months, I’ve stopped asking ChatGPT (my preferred LLM) for advice on business challenges after I realized I was drifting off course. While building a skill set around AI and LLM is critical as a leader, this exercise helped me rebuild self-trust. I feel better in my physical and mental health, my creativity has returned, and I feel back in alignment with my business, my decisions, and my future. I made some hard decisions to quit things that weren’t working for me (that were very well supported by ChatGPT).

One of my clients realized that she was trusting Claude, her preferred LLM, too much for leadership advice. To combat this, she started to read the advice in a toddler’s voice. It helped her remember that the recommendations, while sounding smart, generally offer no more experience and education than a toddler. It’s often guessing at best.

Slow down enough to assess whether this advice aligns with your value system, feels aligned, or even whether it’s advice you’d entertain if a younger coworker suggested it.

DON’T OUTSOURCE YOUR LEADERSHIP POWER

A client of mine remembers the precise day she started looking for a new job. It was the day she shared her annual marketing strategy with her CEO. As CMO, she had spent months gathering enough data and research to craft this careful plan. Her CEO took her plan, put it in ChatGPT, and told her they would be moving forward with one of ChatGPT’s strategies, instead of her custom-crafted plan. She felt her intelligence was undermined as the CEO swapped her decades of marketing knowledge for a tool that has been known to guess.

As modern leaders, we should be both proficient in using AI tools and also cognizant of when not to use them. We have to trust that we can bring all of our five senses to real business issues, and AI cannot. Delegating our approach and decisions to AI leads to a sea of sameness, and in my client’s situation, employee disengagement. In my own experience, defaulting to LLMs for the answer made it harder to think creatively and on the fly for solutions.

Remember, your experience, insights, and senses are unique and valuable. They are your competitive advantage. No AI tool can replace this.