AI’s true potential lies in collaboration not automation

Professor Joshua Gans delivers a powerful message about the power of artificial intelligence at the 2025 Sir Donald Hibberd Lectureship.

Dr Christine Penfold, Prof. Joshua Gans, Campbell Penfold, Tava Olsen & Dr Adrian Hibberd AM

“Artificial Intelligence will take all our jobs.” 

How many times have we heard that phrase?

For Professor Joshua Gans, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto, the speculation about the future is distracting us.

“By focusing on automation, we are missing the point,” Professor Gans said. 

“It’s how artificial intelligence is combined with a person that really matters.” 

Delivering the 2025 Sir Donald Hibberd Lectureship: AI in Management Education, Professor Gans gave a hopeful message about how we can be in the driver's seat when it comes to artificial intelligence.

What does artificial intelligence have in common with a bicycle?

As with any general-use technology, there is always speculation about how it will revolutionise industries and reshape society. 

Professor Gans likened the AI revolution to the invention of the personal computer, referencing a famous quote by Steve Jobs: 

"When we invented the personal computer, we created a new kind of bicycle." 

Just as a person powers a bicycle and a human powers a computer, AI needs human direction to fulfil its potential.

Professor Gans argued the true power of AI lies in how it can work alongside people, amplifying human capabilities and decision-making processes. 

“AI is not some dramatically different form of intelligence,” Professor Gans said.

“What we have is a faster, more efficient human-like intelligence that can assist us in ways we didn’t think possible before.”

In this light, AI should be seen as a co-worker, not as a replacement for human jobs. 

Adoption rates to Artificial Intelligence are relatively slow

Professor Gans noted that just like electricity, while the development of AI is progressing rapidly, its adoption rate is not keeping pace.

So, we can relax, for now.

“Electricity took a little while to get going. A decade after Edison had the lightbulb, there was hardly any electrification of anything in the U.S,” Professor Gans said.

Professor Gans believes AI, despite its transformative potential, will follow a similar trajectory.

“AI is surely in the same boat, that should be our expectation despite what anyone is saying in Silicon Valley about loss of jobs.”

This can be attributed to the fact that AI is still in its early stages, where point solutions and application solutions are being explored, but system-wide solutions have not yet been developed.

“We’ve become so distracted by narratives about what AI will do in the future, we’ve lost sight of what it can do for us right now,” Professor Gans said.

While we are far from seeing AI’s full potential, there is ample opportunity for organisations and individuals to engage with the technology right now.

The two key skills needed for managing Artificial Intelligence 

For organisations, how we manage AI is crucial.

Professor Gans said two key skills were essential for governing AI: verification of output and iteration & improvement.

“Those things are an AI management problem just as they are a person management person,” Professor Gans said.

Wharton Professor of Management Ethan Mollick echoed these sentiments on X, sharing his suspicions that AI skills are the skills of managers including delegation, clear explanations, division of labour, project management and clear feedback.

Just as you would work with a new employee to understand their strengths and weaknesses, Professor Gans said the same approach was needed when integrating AI into your workplace.

While AI may have the potential for 95% accuracy in many applications, it has its foibles and is prone to errors.

Managers play an important role in verifying its outputs.

“In order to protect yourself you have to know when the AI is incorrect, you have to do the work and have knowledge,” Professor Gans said.

However, Professor Gans cautioned organisations shouldn’t just ban AI due to its imperfections and because it wasn't 100% accurate.

“By barring its use, you give no hope of doing the things that could make it 100% useful when you put a human and AI together,” he said.

Instead, organisations should work with it as they would with any new tool, continually refining its performance to better meet their needs.

How AI is revolutionising education

One of the most exciting aspects of AI was its potential to revolutionise education.

Drawing inspiration from his own work with students, Professor Gans discussed common challenges faced by students, including limited accessibility to professors and personalised learning.

“Traditional educational models, like the one-on-one professor-student relationship at Oxford, are difficult to scale economically,” Professor Gans said.

AI can bridge this gap by offering personalised assistance and feedback that would otherwise be impossible to provide at scale.

Professor Gans has created a solution to this problem in the form of EdTech company All Day TA which provides AI-powered Teaching Assistants (TAs) customised for different courses.

These AI TAs answer questions specific to a course, help students prepare for exams, and offer personalised feedback.

And, unlike professors, they are available anytime.

Professor Gans said this freed up educators to focus on more complex aspects of teaching, and to meet with struggling students or coach high-performing students.

For teachers and managers alike, the lesson is clear: AI is not an autonomous agent that will replace humans but rather a tool that just like the bicycle, when powered by a human, gets us further down the road and to new places we haven’t yet explored.

Interested to learn how to utilise Generative AI to drive growth, innovation, and a competitive edge at your organisation? Register for our upcoming two-day short course Generative AI For Business.

The Sir Donald Hibberd Lectureship

The Sir Donald Hibberd Lectureship at Melbourne Business School was established in 1984 by Lady Florence in honour of Sir Donald, who held influential positions in the public service during the Chifley years and helped create Australia's $10 billion aluminium industry.

Dr Adrian Hibberd and Dr Christine Penfold, the children of Sir Donald and Lady Florence are dedicated supporters of the lectureship as it continues their mother and father’s legacy in building the next generation of leaders.

The 2025 lectureship was presented by Professor Joshua Gans, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto, and author of Prediction Machines, Power of Prediction and Entrepreneurship: Choice and Strategy.