This activity is influenced by the work of Ethan Mollick, Professor at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is an early adopter of AI and his book ‘Co-intelligence: living and working with AI’ has been influential worldwide in considering how we can work with AI effectively in education. 

How can I work meaningfully with AI? 

GenAI seems to be everywhere and offers infinite ways to support work, life and study. However, in using any AI tool, there is a strong element of your own agency in how you choose to engage with it. You choose how you wish AI to support you in your work and your decisions will be related to the nature of the task, your sense of ‘responsible AI usage’ and also the strengths and weaknesses of AI in relation to the task. 

If you are not sure where to begin, it might help to think about how you might integrate AI into your working life and exercise that agency of choice. Mollick has conceptualised AI tasks in two ways: cyborg or centaur. To this conceptualisation, we will add ‘just me’.  

This is only a starting point – as AI advances, the distinctions and use cases for these categories are likely to become increasingly blurred. 

For example: 

Centaur: “centaur work has a clear line between person and machine” (p. 136) this is an idea that draws on imagery of the mythical half human – half horse creature (centaur) where the torso is human and the body is horse and there is a distinction between the parts. It suggests a clear division of labour between what a human (you) and the AI does. For example, you might write a presentation and get AI to produce the imagery, or you might analyse a dataset and get AI to produce the graphs. 

Cyborg: “cyborgs blend machine and person, integrating the two deeply. Cyborgs don’t just delegate tasks, they intertwine efforts with AI” (p.137) this idea draws on the fictional conception of a cyborg as an entity that comprises human and machine parts working in integration with each other. In this idea, AI and human working are integrated and working together. For example, you might ask AI to generate some initial ideas, then you edit those ideas and adapt them, then ask AI for feedback or more developed iterations based on your edits, and so on. 

Just me: not using AI at all for certain tasks. This third area is not an attempt to avoid AI, but rather a recognition that sometimes, to aid learning development, you might make a choice not to use AI to support you. For example, you are writing a talk and you wish to start from your own thoughts and work them through as you write, as this helps you progress your ideas and drives creativity. 

It is likely your use of AI could be currently characterised in one, both or all of these three ways and this balance may change as technology develops. The choice over how you use AI is likely to be related to the perceived usefulness of AI to complete or assist with the task, but it may also be related to your own learning or working intentions. Understanding when to use AI responsibly and effectively is also about understanding when you might NOT use AI. 

This conceptualisation can help us when developing our own use and knowledge of AI, when talking about AI with students, advising on how AI might support their studies on your own programme, or constructing AI declarations for particular tasks.  

Bite-sized task 

In this activity, you will consider how the centaur/cyborg/justme conceptualisation relates to your own use of AI, and that of your students. 

Step 1 – learn 

Look at a more detailed account of Ethan Mollick’s idea: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/i-cyborg-using-co-intelligence?hide_intro_popup=true 

Step 2 – do 

Think about your own use of AI.  

Where do you fit in our adapted centaur/cyborg/justme conceptualisation? What kind of tasks, for you, are more ‘centaur,’ ‘cyborg’ or ‘just you?’ 

Can this idea help you to integrate advice on AI, or use of AI into aspects of your programme? How? 

Where do you think your students fit? In producing work for your programme, how might they be working with AI? How and where might you break down tasks or assessments to link to appropriate AI use for certain elements? 

Step 3 – reflect 

Reflect on how our use of AI might develop in the future. Mollick thinks that we will become increasingly centaur/cyborg…but what do you think? 

Further links 

Ethan Mollick on cyborgs and centaurs https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/i-cyborg-using-co-intelligence?hide_intro_popup=true  

Mollick, E. (2024) ‘Co-intelligence: living and working with AI,’ WH Allen: London 

Generative AI working group - information and guidance for staff 

© 2025. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-SA