Returning to the Here and Now: What AI Cannot Replace and Daniel Castaño’s Call to Leadership
Introducing Daniel Castaño’s Commencement Speech on Leadership in a Changing World
As AI continues to change human society, our systems, structures, and the very concepts that have sustained them will also change.
Meanwhile, the workings of our embodied life hardly change at all—our pulse, our breath, our ongoing metabolism. Our hearts move—we shed tears, feel surprise, feel shame.
Even in front of AI that endlessly generates information processing, analysis, proposals, arguments, and even predictions, we can remain within ambiguity. At times we are confused by change, hesitate in our choices, sense the presence of the other and respond skillfully; at times we hesitate to answer and remain silent. We can set things aside and wait until “the moment” arrives. And at any time, we can return to the here and now—before thought forms or judgment arises.
The possibility lies beyond the scope of probability prediction..
With AI’s support and suggestions, we may become even more honest with the emotions that move us—moments of being deeply touched, or courage and hope that rise up within us. The experience of body and mind exists here and now.
AI does not push us away or drive us elsewhere.
I would like to introduce to you a remarkable speech delivered by the Colombian lawyer Daniel Castaño at a law school in Bogotá:
Daniel is one of the close friends I met through the World Economic Forum. In this speech, he refers to our conversations and says that he received an important insight about leadership from them.
He speaks of leadership as something formed through the repeated choices you make in the very moments when no one is watching.
To cultivate the soil beneath your feet, to tend your own garden—that is leadership.
As you walk your “path” with your own feet, you illuminate and cultivate the ground beneath you.
The following article was posted on Daniel Castaño’s LinkedIn and is reproduced with his permission.
December 19, 2025
Cultivating What AI Cannot Replicate: Leadership, Courage, and the Future of Law
Daniel Castaño
I delivered this speech as the Distinguished Commencement Speaker at Universidad Externado de Colombia Law School in Bogotá in November 2025. I’m deeply grateful to University President Hernando Parra for the honor of this invitation.
Exactly fifteen years ago, I was sitting where you are now. It was November 2010, and as I received my diploma, Professor Fernando Hinestrosa looked at me with that combination of wisdom and kindness that characterized him, and he said: “Everything you have done until now is part of the past. Now it’s your turn to start building your future.”
I remember nodding solemnly, as if I had understood. But, in reality, I understood nothing.
I believed I had arrived somewhere. After many years of study, exams, and sleepless nights, I had finally achieved something definitive. A degree. An identity. A certainty about who I was and what I would do with my life.
Today, fifteen years later, I return to this same place with a different understanding of those words. And I want to share with you not only what I have learned about the future of our profession, but about the kind of leaders the world needs you to be.
Today, fifteen years later, I understand that Professor Hinestrosa was inviting me to recognize that uncertainty is the gift, not the problem.
Because if I had known fifteen years ago what I would face—the crises, the failures, the moments of deep doubt—perhaps I wouldn’t have had the courage to begin.
If I had also known the moments of revelation, of connection, of meaning I would find along the way, perhaps I wouldn’t have lived them with the intensity that only surprise allows.
Life is not carved into stone. And that is not a tragedy. It’s an invitation.
Do you realize how radical this statement is?
Evoking the writings of Henry David Thoreau, we live as if there were three lands: the past, the present, and the future. We spend most of our mental time in two of them—lamenting what was or yearning for what will be—while the only real land, the only moment in which we truly exist, escapes us.
That’s why eternity is not in the future. Eternity is in this moment.
Louis Josserand invited us to look around and live with our times in a moment of dizzying transformation—industrialization, the massive social changes of the 20th century. His cautionary tale was clear: either we lawyers live in this time, or this time will live without us.
And our time is extraordinary.
Artificial intelligence is transforming every profession, every industry, every dimension of human life. Law is no exception.
We live in a moment where AI can review thousands of contracts in seconds, predict judicial decisions with astonishing precision, generate legal arguments in minutes.
We live in a moment where human knowledge accumulated over millennia is at our fingertips. We live in a moment where the boundaries between the possible and the impossible are being reshaped every day.
It’s natural, then, to feel concern. It’s natural to ask: what will be left for us, human lawyers? Will we be replaced by ChatGPT?
But these questions reveal that we’re looking backward—longing for a past where our function was obvious—or looking forward with anxiety—fearing a future where we become obsolete.
But if we look around us: What do we see?
We see that while machines can process information, they cannot inhabit the fear that others avoid.
We see that law is not just data processing: It’s human presence. It’s judgment in ambiguity. It’s courage in uncertainty. It’s creativity when all paths seem closed.
Living with our times doesn’t mean competing with machines. It means doing what only humans can do: being completely present.
And that power is exactly what no machine can replicate.
Because a machine can calculate. But it cannot doubt.
A machine can optimize. But it cannot waver before a moral dilemma.
A machine can process judicial precedents. But it cannot tell right from wrong, as Alan Turing argued in the 1950s.
That capacity to inhabit uncertainty—to be present in not-knowing—is the essence of legal work in its most profound form.
This is not romanticism. It’s practice. And it’s irreplaceable.
But this practice demands something very specific: it demands that you constantly confront your own ego.
Because the greatest obstacle to practicing law with integrity is not outside. It’s inside.
Because the ego tells us: “You must know. You must be right. You must look impeccable. You cannot show weakness.” And in the process, it disconnects us from what really matters: serving our clients, serving justice, serving truth.
The ego creates fear and prevents us from being free, as my dear Juan Carlos Henao taught me.
Let me share an image that accompanied me during a recent trip to Dubai with the World Economic Forum, where I had the opportunity to talk about the future of leadership with thinkers from around the world.
There I met Shoukei Matsumoto, who confronted me with a very profound reality about leadership: We have equated leadership with position. With title. With authority. With the illusion of having control.
But a leader is not the one with the biggest office or the most impressive title. A leader is simply the person who is willing to do what others fear to do. From Shoukei I got one of the most meaningful leadership lessons I’ve ever received.
But there’s a trap in all this discourse about leadership. The trap is overestimating our real impact.
It’s tempting to think: “I’m going to change the legal system.” “I’m going to reform institutions.” “I’m going to change the world.”
And those thoughts, however principled they may seem, are another way of fleeing the present. Because “changing the system“ is an abstraction. It’s looking toward another land. It’s, as Thoreau would say, standing on our island of opportunities and dreaming of being somewhere else.
You don’t save the world. You tend your garden.
Let me explain this metaphor and connect it to something broader. Shoukei Matsumoto teaches us that an astronaut looks at Earth from space and sees the whole planet. A gardener cultivates the soil directly beneath their feet.
Both perspectives have value, but in moments of systemic crisis like the current one, the second is perhaps more urgent. A gardener kneels on the ground beneath their feet and cultivates what they can reach.
That is your garden. That is the ground you can cultivate.
This is where you, as Externadistas, have a unique calling.
Leadership is not something you wait to receive when you become partners at a firm or magistrates of a High Court. Leadership is what you do today, in this moment, when no one is watching.
Law has always been the art of building bridges between what is and what should be, between conflict and harmony, between divergent interests and the common good. But that art cannot be exercised with 20th-century tools on 21st-century problems.
AI can memorize every precedent; you must cultivate discernment about which precedent is relevant for a radically new context. AI can identify patterns in historical data; you must imagine futures that don’t yet exist in any dataset.
Every time you choose honesty over convenience, you are cultivating your garden. Every time you admit “I don’t know” instead of pretending, every time you have the courage to speak the truth when it’s inconvenient, every time you defend someone in need when it would be easier to look the other way, you are cultivating your garden.
Those small actions—those moment-to-moment choices—are what build the kind of lawyer you’re going to be.
This triggers a spectacular butterfly effect: when you tend your garden with total presence—when you find your eternity in each moment, that garden becomes part of a larger ecosystem.
The sum of all those gardens—of millions of lawyers around the world making those small choices with presence—is what transforms systems.
Not because we have a master plan. But because we inhabit our moment with integrity.
Fifteen years ago, Professor Hinestrosa told me to build my future. Today I say the same to you. But with an additional clarity:
The future you build will not be what you imagine today. It will be stranger, more complex, more challenging than you can anticipate.
There will be moments when you feel lost. Moments when you doubt yourselves. Moments when the path you chose will seem like the wrong one.
In those moments, remember this: you don’t need to have all the answers. You only need to have the courage to keep asking the questions.
There are possible futures where technology amplifies inequality, where law serves only the powerful, where justice is a privilege of the few.
And there are possible futures where technology democratizes access to justice, where law protects the most vulnerable, where you use your skills to build a more equitable society.
The difference between those futures is the choices you make.
Those are the choices that build the future. Small and silent acts of courage.
Evoking Shoukei Matsumoto’s wisdom, my invitation to you today is not that you be heroes. My invitation is that you be gardeners.
Cultivate the ground beneath you. Nurture the relationships you build. Create the conditions for others to prosper. And when you face fear—and you will face it—remember that the act of moving through that fear is what dissolves it.
We don’t need more lawyers who have all the answers. We need more lawyers who are willing to ask the difficult questions.
We don’t need more leaders who project invulnerability. We need more leaders who give us courage.
We don’t need more people who pretend to have control. We need more people who have the courage to recognize when they don’t.
And here I want to pause to acknowledge something important: Externado is not just a law school.
Externado University is a garden that has been cultivated for generations and will soon celebrate 140 years educating for freedom.
A place where we deliberately plant not only legal knowledge, but critical capacities, social sensitivity, integrity, and ethical commitment.
Here we have taught you not only what the law says, but why it exists and whom it serves. We have invited you to question, to debate, to imagine alternatives. We have exposed you to philosophy, economics, ethics, social thought, because Externado understands something fundamental: law does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in relation.
So today, as you receive the diploma certifying your degree, don’t think you’re finishing something. You’re beginning.
You’re beginning to build your career. You’re beginning to define what kind of lawyers you want to be. You’re beginning to contribute to the construction of a better country.
But now that preparation must continue. Because living with our times, as Josserand encouraged, requires continuous learning. The world is changing faster than ever. And you must remain a student all your life.
Not because you left something pending. But because loving the unknown, as Professor Hinestrosa used to say, means remaining open, curious, willing to be surprised.
That is your responsibility. That is your power.
This degree is just the beginning. Now it’s your turn to build your future.
And in doing so, it falls to all of us—to Externado, to your families, to your professors, to your colleagues—to walk alongside you.
Welcome to the beginning of the journey. Congratulations!