How Is It Artificial Intelligence?

If you walk into any conference, office, or coffee shop conversation lately, one word seems to dominate the air:

AI.

Say it once, say it twice, say it ten times — everyone leans in. Why? Because it has become the buzzword of the moment. The magic ingredient companies want to sprinkle on everything:

"Now with AI!" "AI-driven insights!" "AI-enhanced experience!"

It reminds me of an earlier era when products were labeled “fat-free” or “organic.” It didn’t matter what was inside the box — if you slapped the trendy term on it, it sold.

Well, here we are again. And it’s time for a little clarity.

The Intelligence Isn’t Artificial

Here’s what nobody wants to say out loud:

AI isn’t artificial at all. It’s accumulated intelligence.

Where does that accumulation come from?

• You.
• Me.
• Your teams.
• My teams.
• Billions of conversations, documents, articles, images, presentations, ideas, and decisions that real people have shared over time.

When we gather in mastermind groups… When we brainstorm in conference rooms… When we swap strategies at industry events…

We are, in fact, sharing our intelligence. We are teaching each other, and the digital tools are listening in.

AI systems simply absorb, store, and retrieve that intelligence at greater speed and scale than a single human ever could.

But let’s not get it twisted:

The spark is human. The experience is human. The intelligence is human. It is not artificial.

The Power of Collective Intelligence

I’ve been in the mortgage and leadership space for 30+ years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that being in the right room changes everything.

You can spend months working on a challenge by yourself… Or you can spend two hours in a room with people you trust — and walk out with ten actionable ideas.

That’s not magic. That’s accumulated intelligence. It’s what happens when human beings collaborate, exchange ideas, and build on each other’s thinking.

Think about how this works in your own business:

• You attend an industry event → you hear a new marketing idea → you apply it.
• You run a team mastermind → someone shares a strategy → you adapt it for your market.
• You post a challenge on LinkedIn → people comment → you implement the best suggestions.

That flow of learning and applying is how human intelligence builds over time. AI didn’t invent this. We did.

The Illusion of “Artificial”

The term "artificial intelligence" suggests that this intelligence is somehow being generated by machines out of thin air.

Let me be clear: it isn’t.

Every Large Language Model (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) works the same basic way:

• It was trained on vast amounts of human-created data.
• It absorbs patterns in human communication.
• It mimics the logic and flow of human thought.

The intelligence being served back to you is based on what humanity has already created and shared. The machine didn’t write Shakespeare or Einstein’s papers or the ten million how-to posts on leadership and marketing. We did.

The machine just learned how to pattern-match and synthesize that information faster than we can.

Why This Matters for Leaders

Now, here’s why this conversation matters — especially if you lead teams or run a business:

👉 If you believe AI is replacing human intelligence, you’ll start leaning back.

👉 If you understand that AI is simply accelerating human intelligence, you’ll lean in harder.

The companies and leaders who will win in this next phase of technology are those who keep investing in human intelligence:

✅ Mastermind groups ✅ Coaching and development ✅ In-person collaboration ✅ Leadership training ✅ Cross-industry learning ✅ Strategic thinking ✅ Creativity and storytelling

These are not skills that will be made obsolete by AI. These skills will become increasingly valuable as AI amplifies them.

In other words:

The more human intelligence you feed the system, the more valuable you become as a leader of the system.

The Real Risk

The risk is not that AI will become “too smart.” The risk is that we will stop contributing new intelligence to the world.

If we stop gathering. If we stop sharing. If we stop learning and collaborating in real time.

Then yes — the systems will just recycle old ideas. And we’ll start to sound like the cartoon I shared at the top of this post: A room full of people saying nothing but “AI.”

Final Thought

If you lead a team, a business, or even your own professional growth, you need to step into the world of AI with intention. Know this: while AI is an incredible accomplishment, it is only as powerful as the questions we ask it. That’s why we must learn to treat accumulated intelligence as a responsibility, not just a resource.

Run regular masterminds. Teach your team to ask better questions. Share your hard-earned insights openly (yes, even here on LinkedIn). And keep in mind — we are only scratching the surface of what’s to come. But the teams that prepare today will be the ones best equipped to lead tomorrow.