EY’s $100 Million Bet on AI-Assisted Human Intelligence™

Why investing in artificial intelligence increasingly means investing in human intelligence.

For much of the debate surrounding artificial intelligence, organisations have concentrated on what machines will soon be able to do better than humans.

EY US has just placed a sizeable bet on the other side of that equation: what humans will need to enhance as machines become more capable.

In August 2026, EY US announced a $100 million investment to reward professionals who develop what it calls ‘future-focused skills’. Alongside effective technology adoption, EY specifically identified business acumen, judgement, adaptability, innovation, leadership through disruption, and exceptional client service. The investment forms part of EY’s broader ambition to develop talent capable of thriving in what it describes as a ‘tech-led, human-powered world’.

And therein lies a rather interesting paradox of the AI revolution: the more intelligent the machines, the more distinctive human intelligence becomes.

The Human Intelligence Premium

Artificial intelligence is rapidly making sophisticated information and analysis more abundant. Executives can already use AI to research markets, synthesise vast quantities of information, identify patterns, challenge assumptions, generate strategic alternatives, and accelerate decision-making. Capabilities that once required considerable time, expertise, and resources are increasingly available within minutes.

As those capabilities become ubiquitous, however, competitive advantage begins to migrate. The question shifts from ‘Who has access to AI?’ towards ‘Who exercises the best judgement with it?’

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 points in the same direction. Whilst AI and big data rank amongst the fastest-growing skills, employers continue to identify analytical thinking, resilience and adaptability, and leadership and social influence amongst their most important core capabilities.

At London Leadership Review, I describe this relationship as AI-Assisted Human Intelligence™: using artificial intelligence to strengthen rather than substitute human capability.

AI can research faster, preserve institutional knowledge, identify patterns humans miss, challenge assumptions, and increasingly participate in the reasoning surrounding complex decisions. But assistance is not accountability. Intelligence can help establish what could be done; human judgement must ultimately determine what should be done.

The machine does not have to live with the consequences of the decision. The leader does.

The Leadership Opportunity

This is where EY’s investment becomes particularly interesting. One of the world’s largest professional-services organisations, operating in an industry profoundly exposed to generative AI, is investing simultaneously in technological and human capability.

Teaching executives how to use AI tools is relatively straightforward. Developing the judgement, adaptability, analytical rigour, curiosity, and leadership acuity required to use them effectively is considerably harder.

As I argue in AI-Ready Boardroom Leadership, ‘The quality of leadership is ultimately determined not by the volume of information available, nor by the sophistication of the Artificial Intelligence supporting it, but by the quality of human judgement exercised at the moment a decision is made.’

The organisations that outperform in the AI era may therefore not be those that deploy the most artificial intelligence, but those that develop the strongest relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.

More capable machines require more capable humans, and better leaders capable of combining the two. That is the $100 million bet on AI-Assisted Human Intelligence™.