The Cognition Index Research Report: 62% want human intuition over AI

The report comes from an unusual pairing: WSJ Intelligence, the thought leadership arm of The Wall Street Journal's commercial sales organization, ran the study with sponsorship from Philip Morris International, the tobacco and smoke-free products company. WSJ Intelligence describes it as the largest-scale research program it has ever conducted, drawing on more than 2,500 business professionals across the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, South Africa and Brazil, and it maps sentiment from entry-level associates up to the C-suite.

The findings sit alongside each other in an interesting way. The same professionals who are described as increasingly optimistic about AI's role in improving decision-making still say human judgment, ethics, critical thinking and empathy must be actively protected. Moira Gilchrist, PMI's Chief Global Communications Officer, frames the issue with a muscle metaphor: use it or lose it, and the risk is outsourcing thinking to technology. Carolyn Romano, Director of Research at WSJ Intelligence, calls AI an exceptional co-pilot whose long-term success depends on leaders who nurture human insight.

The open question is organizational rather than attitudinal. The survey says only 1 in 4 professionals strongly agree their organization has a clear, effective process for fact-checking AI outputs, so the stakes likely hinge on whether companies actually build those governed, human-in-the-loop processes — a gap that appears to fall to the leaders the report addresses.