Completion rates are not capability
Most AI literacy programs are built around tools. Employees learn what the tools do, practice using them, pass an assessment. The organization gets a number it can report.
What that number does not capture is whether anyone's judgement improved. Whether people got better at knowing when to trust the output and when to question it. Whether they became more capable, or just faster at producing outputs that look capable.
HR sits at the center of this problem. The function is responsible for workforce capability, not just workforce activity. Those are different things, and the difference is getting harder to see.
Where the reasoning goes quiet
Hiring is the clearest example. An AI tool surfaces a shortlist, scores candidates against criteria, flags gaps in a CV. The recruiter reviews the output. Over time, reviewing the output starts to replace forming an independent view. Nobody decides that. It just happens.
Performance reviews follow the same pattern. A manager uses AI to draft a summary of someone's year. The draft is good enough. Editing it feels like the job. Writing from scratch, from actual observation and judgement, starts to feel unnecessary.
Workforce planning carries the same risk at a larger scale. The model recommends. The team approves. The reasoning that should sit between those two steps gets thin, then thinner.
What Steve covers with HR and L&D teams
Steve works with HR and L&D teams on the gap between AI literacy and AI judgement. The first is about knowing how to use the tools. The second is about knowing how much of your thinking to keep for yourself.
That involves looking at where AI is already embedded in HR workflows, where the reasoning is being handed over, and what would need to change in how people are trained and assessed.
The work is practical. It produces programs that develop judgement alongside tool use, not instead of it. The goal is not to use AI less. It is to make sure the people using it are still the ones doing the thinking.
Read the first chapter free
Steve's book, Cognitive Sovereignty, covers this in full. The first chapter is free and can be read in about 20 minutes. It makes the case for what is actually at risk -- and what to do about it.
If you want to bring Steve in
Steve speaks and consults with organizations in hr directors and chros on the specific challenges AI adoption creates for their work. The Work with Me page has the details.