When NetDragon Websoft appointed an AI system called Tang Yu as CEO in 2022, journalists were as excited to report on the story as my fellow leadership development professionals were to discuss it. The promise of an algorithm sitting on a desk in the corner office with no ego, fatigue, stress, or biases, and quick to answer each and every problem, seemed both scary and exciting. But despite the musings of the great AI replacement theory proponents the news reminded me of an anecdote from my past. 

Over two decades ago my colleagues were preparing a presentation on Emotional Intelligence with Daniel Goleman — author of the 1995 bestseller Emotional Intelligence — for a group of French academics and business leaders. The organizer liked the topic but hated the title. “How can intelligence be emotional or emotions intelligent?” he asked. It was agreed that “managing emotions intelligently” would be as much as the audience could cope with.

Just as back then, I continue to wish we were more inquisitive about what we mean by “artificial intelligence.” Artificial intelligence doesn’t mean that something artificial is intelligent but instead highlights how machine intelligence is an artifice. What looks like intelligence isn’t intelligence at all.

This is much more than mere semantics: it reframes the entire leadership question. And with the introduction of “leaders” such as NetDragon Websoft’s Tang Yu, it forces us to ask what leadership is and what’s required in a world saturated with systems that simulate thinking.

AI doesn’t understand, intend, or care. It predicts. It assembles. It produces outputs that resemble thought by recombining patterns it has seen before. There’s no artificial mind at work behind the fluency. Rather, AI systems have humans behind them making the consequential choices.

It’s humans who decide what data is collected and what’s ignored. It’s humans who design the blueprint — the rules, weights, and objectives — that shapes how outputs are generated. When an AI system produces a confident answer, it’s never objective or neutral. It’s the downstream expression of upstream human judgment.

I call this AI’s ABCs: Artifacts, Blueprint, Composition. 

• Artifacts are the fragments of reality the system is fed (numerical, categorical, ordinal, textual, or image data). 
  
  
• The blueprint determines how those artifacts are processed. 
  
  
• Composition is the output. It’s an assembly of probabilities rather than a conclusion reached through understanding.
  
  

That structure is fundamentally different from how human beings and their intelligence operate. We don’t merely process information. We interpret it. We don’t just optimize for quick outcomes. We weigh consequences. But perhaps most importantly, we don’t just decide. We live with the moral consequences of those decisions. 

These differences are where leadership lives.

Human leadership is grounded in a very different set of ABCs. Our intelligence rests in Awareness, Body, and Culture.

• Awareness means that, unlike a machine, we know we exist. And with that comes the emotional and moral make-up that gives us such attributes as guilt, empathy, shame, pride, and intuition that ensure we make the decisions that are appropriately right rather than logically sound. 
  
  
• Our bodies’ chemistry and physical state shape how we perceive, decide, and connect. Whether through posture, facial expressions, tone, or presence, we communicate empathy and confidence in ways that land viscerally. 
  
  
• In contrast to AI’s composition output, our output shapes cultures. The way we make decisions becomes the social climate others work in.
  
  So, what does this all mean in practice? Here are five actions leaders must take now if they want to remain relevant, credible, and trusted in an AI world.