ACTUAL Intelligence: Practitioner Perspectives on Centering the Human in the Age of AI

The introduction of large language models (LLMs) to the general public has sparked a groundswell of discussion around artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications. Higher education faculty and instructional support staff are facing sweeping changes in how they teach and work. Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the disruption has been significant, and teaching and learning professionals are grappling with how AI is reshaping the educational landscape. On the one hand, AI offers opportunities to improve efficiency, personalize learning, expand individualized support, increase accessibility, and enable the creation of customized learning materials. On the other hand, it raises serious concerns about bias, misinformation, hallucinations, declines in critical thinking, deskilling, intellectual property, privacy, security, plagiarism, cheating, and environmental impact.

Like the two sides of a coin, AI has the potential for both exciting innovations and disastrous consequences. Holding these two truths simultaneously can be challenging, especially as faculty, staff, and students are continually bombarded with hype. Amid that noise, the importance of ACTUAL intelligence—the human capacity to leverage agency, build connections, establish trust, celebrate uniqueness, rely on adaptability, and lean into lifelong learning—must not be overlooked. Without rejecting AI, faculty and instructional support staff must leverage their ACTUAL intelligence to shape the future of education, recognizing that human ingenuity remains essential to their work.

Given how quickly AI tools are reaching millions of users, their impacts on teaching, learning, and instructional support practices must be carefully considered.

The Promises and Perils of AI Adoption in Higher Education

Futurists paint many different pictures of what AI will mean for humanity. Some are promising, and others are more perilous. On the promising side, AI can increase efficiency and effectiveness, automate menial tasks, and make our professional lives better. Virtual agents can assist with a range of higher education functions, from admissions to technical support. For example, instructional designers can use AI to draft learning objectives, create materials and assessments, and personalize learning in ways that were previously too time intensive. Faculty (and students) can quickly create customized study guides, notes, and materials. AI can also be used to make content more accessible for a broader range of learners, such as by supporting the adaptation of materials for neurodivergent learners.

On the perilous side, horrific scenarios are easy to imagine thanks to movies and series such as The Terminator, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, I, Robot, Oxygen, T.I.M., M3GAN, M3GAN 2.0, and Sunny. Science fiction aside, the very real perils of using AI must also be considered. Some faculty have resorted to banning the use of AI in the classroom. However, as AI is increasingly embedded in the tools faculty, staff, and students use every day, avoiding it is becoming more difficult and, at times, impossible. In addition, not preparing students to use AI is a disservice to them. This article does not advocate for avoidance; instead, it encourages the honing of ACTUAL intelligence to ensure responsible AI use.

What Is ACTUAL Intelligence?

ACTUAL intelligence is using our capacity as human beings—our humanness—to imagine possibilities for a more hopeful future. It leverages the key human capacities of agency, connection, trust, uniqueness, adaptability, and lifelong learning to guard against becoming overly reliant on AI.

Agency

In the AI era, greater productivity is expected, especially given the significant budget challenges colleges and universities face. Leaning into AI and other emerging technologies, however, should not come at the expense of human agency. Everyone in the campus community must preserve their capacity to think, reason, choose, and act independently as they determine how AI tools should be implemented. Both IT professionals and educators need to decide which processes should be automated and periodically monitored and which still require their expertise. Should AI make critical decisions without human involvement? Should student work be graded solely by AI? Definitely not. Human judgment is informed not only by data but also by training, expertise, and lived experiences. Individuals must guard against "AI decay"—the gradual erosion of intellectual capacity caused by overreliance on AI tools. Otherwise, people could find themselves no longer trusting their own judgment without AI assistance.^Footnote1

Believing that AI-generated information is always correct and relying too heavily on AI can lead to missed opportunities and problems. Faculty should design assignments that encourage students to think and engage critically rather than churn out answers for a grade. While this is not an easy task, one approach is to have students compare their work with AI output and assess where their human contribution is stronger and where AI could provide support. This compare-and-contrast exercise helps demystify the capabilities of AI. IT professionals should likewise consider the implications of allowing AI to interact directly with users. Chatbots, for example, can be very useful, but their lack of contextual understanding may result in incomplete, misleading, or incorrect responses, frustrating users. As these tools are adopted, everyone in the campus community must be mindful not to surrender their agency for decision-making and support.

Connection

As humans, we have the ability and responsibility to communicate, collaborate, and connect with others using our ACTUAL intelligence. Social connection increases our emotional well-being.^Footnote2 When people cultivate a network of supporters that they can rely on and learn from, they become more resilient in the face of change. Connection gives us a depth and breadth of understanding of others' lived experiences beyond what we can gain on our own. Although automation and efficiency can help direct us to the right place, provide standardized answers, take payments, and alert us to problems, AI cannot replace the value of human interactions.

Faculty can connect with their students, know them as individuals, create opportunities to build community in their classrooms, and respond authentically. Faculty can also help cultivate professional networks and communities within their classes by connecting alumni and industry partners with students. Similarly, IT professionals have a responsibility to connect with and care about the community of users they support. We have all experienced the frustration of getting stuck in an AI loop when we're trying to get assistance with something. Sometimes, we simply need to talk to another human being. The power of a warm and positive interaction with another person, especially when one of them is struggling, should not be underestimated. When users are grappling with or are frustrated by a piece of technology, IT professionals have an obligation to connect with them. They also have a duty to ensure that technology tools do not continuously frustrate users. No matter how many knowledge base articles technology professionals create, users will struggle—just as students sometimes do. There is nothing artificial about connection, care, and compassion, and these should never be given up.

Trust

Trust means having confidence in a person, process, or entity. Trust enables people to build strong relationships and collaborate effectively. Humans build trust by consistently doing what they say they will do. Technologists build trust in their technologies and institutions by providing reliable, user-friendly tools and offering excellent customer support. Faculty members build trust by being responsive to students' questions and requests for feedback.

For faculty, a commitment to a "humanistic" approach to teaching is foundational to trust. This means prioritizing students' needs, well-being, and motivations. For IT professionals, a humanistic approach means prioritizing user needs as much as possible in technology implementations. In contrast, a "technocratic" approach emphasizes the use of technology in a highly structured way, making it the primary driver of decision-making and prioritizing efficiency and standardized outcomes over individual needs and experiences.

Efficiency and structure are not inherently bad. However, faculty cannot develop the trust they need in their classrooms if they always prioritize structure and efficiency over students' needs. In addition to being responsive to students, being transparent about teaching approaches builds trust. Although faculty know the "why" behind their learning outcomes, assignments, and assessments, they must ensure they communicate it clearly to students. Faculty can also be upfront with students about their own use of AI for tasks such as course planning and assessment. Being clear about the purpose and value of an assignment can help faculty establish a trusting relationship with their students. The same holds true for technology implementations. Are technologists transparent and do they include their stakeholders in decision-making? Technologists should actively communicate what they are doing and why. If instructors don't share the "why" with students, and if technologists do not listen to and prioritize user requirements, trust will not be built.

Uniqueness

Every person is unique, with their own intelligence, expertise, and lived experiences. In a world with AI, leveraging the concept of "unique ability"—recognizing that each person brings a combination of natural talents, passions, and skills that enable them to make meaningful contributions in the workplace—is key. For technologists—especially those in leadership roles—this means leveraging the unique strengths of staff to examine all facets of the work, identifying opportunities for improvement, and building high-functioning teams that drive innovation. In learning spaces, faculty can honor different ways of learning and knowing as a path to celebrating students' uniqueness. This may mean providing different ways for students to meet learning objectives or demonstrate knowledge. It can also mean celebrating the diversity of skills, talents, and experiences among students.

Every higher education institution has its own culture, norms, and expectations. Faculty and staff bring different backgrounds and educational paths to their jobs and work together to fulfill organizational goals. The best workplaces respect the unique ability of every person. Although AI can assist with routine tasks, shining a light on the unique lived experiences and abilities of colleagues and students remains essential.

Adaptability

Because of our ACTUAL intelligence, humans are adaptable and resilient. We can adapt to new environments, tasks, and situations. For example, as hardware and software evolve—and presumably improve—we need to figure out what they can do and then learn how to apply them to our work. Although we can (and should) adapt to using AI to complete routine tasks and support workflows, we must safeguard our humanness, which is critical to maintaining appropriate guardrails around the use of AI tools.

Rapid change is a constant in today's world, and we can use our ACTUAL intelligence to build resilience, self-regulation, and emotional intelligence—core human competencies that will help us navigate change, face problems, and move forward.

AI should be viewed as an assistant, a tool that can be used to help make routine tasks more efficient so that faculty and staff can spend more time on complex problem-solving. The word "assistant" is preferred to "partner" when talking about AI; terms such as "collaborating" and "partnering" should be reserved for work with other humans. Faculty can model adaptable behaviors in the classroom by demonstrating how they adapt their curriculum and by facilitating opportunities for students to explore and evaluate AI. Technologists can support adaptable behavior within their teams by providing time and space for colleagues to learn new tools and apply them, creating environments that support learning, and allowing teams to explore new technologies without fear of failure.

Lifelong Learning

Because of the rapidly changing world and the emergence of technologies, jobs, and roles we don't even know about yet—and because we are living longer—we are going to need to learn constantly. To do so, we must remain curious and open and continually seek opportunities to develop our skills. Learning does not end with a degree. We are lifelong learners (or long-life learners, as coined by Michelle Weise in 2021).^Footnote3 If colleges and universities are truly learning organizations, then faculty, staff, and students must be encouraged to learn new things, experiment with new ideas, and share them freely with their peers.^Footnote4 Learning organizations foster a growth mindset, allowing for stretch assignments that promote development.^Footnote5

Cultivating a learning culture includes attracting and developing agile learners, creating a psychologically safe environment, encouraging better conversations and feedback, and making learning an organizational priority.^Footnote6 Within this context, AI has the potential to support personalized learning pathways for adults.^Footnote7 For example, faculty can ask AI to create a customized learning plan and continue to prompt the system with specific needs to further tailor the plan, fact-checking the output along the way. However, leading with ACTUAL intelligence is essential because AI cannot replace the human capacity for critical thinking and learning. Faculty have an opportunity to model ACTUAL intelligence for their students by staying informed about developments in AI and thoughtfully exploring and evaluating its capabilities. In doing so, they can model adaptable learning behaviors and guide students to embrace continuous learning.

Conclusion

The higher education community must be mindful of the risk of overreliance on AI and continue to trust and build on human judgment and expertise. As technologists and faculty members, we need to use AI appropriately to support our work and to help students prepare for a job market (and a world) that expects them to know how to use AI. However, we should not allow AI to drive decision-making about how it is implemented. Instead, we should leverage our ACTUAL intelligence. We have agency; we can connect with others and build trust; we are unique; we are adaptable; and we have the ability to learn constantly. To ensure a future in which AI usage is human-centered, we must rely on our ACTUAL intelligence.

Notes

1. Cornella C. Walther, "The Risk of Agency Decay Amid AI Use," Psychology Today, June 26, 2025. Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.↩
2. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, "The Major Health Implications of Social Connection," Current Directions in Psychological Science 30, no. 3 (2021): 251–259. Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.↩
3. Alison Griffon, "Long Life Learning Is the New Postsecondary Education," Forbes, January 21, 2021.Jump back to footnote 3 in the text. ↩
4. Muhammad Junaid Ahsan, "Cultivating a Culture of Learning: The Role of Leadership in Fostering Lifelong Development," The Learning Organization: An International Journal 32, no. 2 (2025): 282–306. Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.↩
5. Stephanie Trovas, "Cultivate a Learning Culture Within Your Organization," Center for Creative Leadership, May 12, 2022. Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.↩
6. IbidJump back to footnote 6 in the text.↩
7. Patricia Fidalgo and Joan Thormann, "The Future of Lifelong Learning: The Role of Artificial Intelligence and Distance Education," in Lifelong Learning: Education for the Future World, ed. Filippo Gomez Paloma (IntechOpen, 2024). Jump back to footnote 7 in the text.↩

---

Donna Petherbridge is Vice Provost, DELTA, at North Carolina State University.

Sarah Egan Warren is Teaching Assistant Professor, Institute for Advanced Analytics, at North Carolina State University.