If You Don’t Define AI’s Role, It Will Choose One for You
- Christoph Burkhardt
- Jan 6
- 1 min read
By Christoph Burkhardt
AI Strategy Advisor | Founder, AI Impact Institute
One of the most dangerous myths of the AI era is that intelligence automatically implies understanding.
It doesn’t.
AI does not reason. It predicts. It does not judge. It optimizes. It does not lead. It responds.
Yet in 2025, many organizations implicitly treated AI as:
A decision-maker
A strategic advisor
A proxy for judgment
Not because they intended to—but because they never explicitly defined its role.
AI should always be positioned deliberately. Never as the brain. Never as the owner.
Instead, AI should play specific, bounded roles:
Sparring partner to stress-test thinking
Simulator to surface risks and scenarios
Auditor to enforce consistency and standards
Analyst to process volume at scale
Critic to challenge blind spots
Drafter to accelerate execution
Humans retain ownership of judgment, values, context, and direction.
This isn’t about limiting AI.
It’s about protecting what makes leadership meaningful.
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