Ethan Mollick Warns Against Surrendering Human Agency to AI

Ethan Mollick stands out as an academic who integrates artificial intelligence into nearly every facet of his workflow, utilizing AI to fact-check his upcoming book, automate daily updates, and deploy AI agents for research projects. Yet, the Wharton professor firmly insists on typing the initial draft of every written piece himself, noting that AI tools possess an irresistible allure capable of steering thought in every direction. Without this personal step, the final output delivered to readers would merely reflect the work of Claude filtered solely through his hands.

Serving as a professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Wharton School, head of the Wharton Generative AI Labs, and author of the Substack newsletter One Useful Thing with roughly half a million subscribers alongside his previous book Co-Intelligence, Mollick's insights carry significant weight. His contributions led Time magazine to name him one of the 100 most influential people in AI. His philosophy of embedding personal agency into work originates directly from his classroom, where students must launch actual companies during their coursework while tackling the most ambitious ideas by continually asking whether they can push boundaries further.

This dynamic became immediately apparent when ChatGPT launched, prompting Mollick to scrap his lesson plan that day to demonstrate its capabilities. By the end of the session, a student had already coded an entire semester's project. Since then, the ambition levels of students have scaled upward annually. Recent cohorts include surgeons, medical device makers, financial professionals, non-profit workers, and military personnel who instantly build practical tools, ranging from supply chain tracking systems to patient communication frameworks, even though certain recurring ideas like eliminating real estate brokers continue to fail due to entrenched social and legal barriers.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

Regarding business creation and software development, Mollick points out that numerous entrepreneurs remain trapped in the Software-as-a-Service business model. Meanwhile, research from Anthropic indicates that general managers can generate first-pass code more effectively than traditional programmers, as the core competency has shifted toward clear instruction-giving rather than manual coding proficiency. Consequently, major organizations are increasingly looking to bypass external software vendors in favor of building proprietary internal tools.