The Essential Human Skills That AI-type Tech Can't Replace -- But Most Employees Lack

We’ve been developing what we call ACEs — Advanced Contextualization Engines — which combine expert knowledge with contextualization algorithms to replicate the application of skills in specific situations. In essence, ACEs enable individuals to handle knowledge-based tasks with expert-level proficiency, even without the experience themselves. Imagine tools that empower a new supervisor to lead and manage as effectively as a seasoned one.

We’ve spent considerable time exploring what ACEs mean for knowledge workers. What will humans do when they have a suite of ACEs at their disposal? It turns out that a lot of challenging work remains uniquely human. For instance, imagine a prototypical project management team with access to ACEs designed to enhance their project management skills. Here’s what ACEs won’t fully do for them:

• Strategic Decision-Making and Oversight: Human judgment is crucial for interpreting complex contexts and adapting strategies, something ACEs can’t fully replicate.
• Leadership and Team Management: Motivating team members, resolving conflicts, and fostering collaboration remain essential human leadership responsibilities.
• Stakeholder Engagement and Communication: Building relationships, negotiating, and tailoring communications require nuanced human interaction.
• Ethical and Compliance Responsibilities: Making ethical decisions and interpreting ambiguous regulations depends on human values and professional judgment.
• Innovation and Creative Problem-Solving: Generating fresh ideas and fostering creativity will always benefit from human ingenuity.
• Professional Development and Mentoring: Coaching and mentoring team members require the personal guidance that ACEs can’t fully provide.
• Quality Assurance and Validation: Ensuring the outputs of ACEs meet quality standards will often require human review, especially at a managerial level.
• Crisis Management: Responding to novel emergencies and providing emotional support will continue to require human input.
• Cultural Sensitivity and Global Considerations: Navigating cultural differences and local nuances benefits significantly from human sensitivity and awareness.
• Ethical Use and Governance of ACEs: Ensuring the transparent, ethical, and bias-free use of ACEs—including maintaining data privacy—remains a human responsibility.

In fields like graphic design, a similar list emerges, with some additions:

• Conceptualization and Original Creativity: Generating unique ideas and original concepts benefits from human imagination.
• Innovation and Trendsetting: Pushing creative boundaries and setting trends rely on human creativity and risk-taking.
• Adaptation and Customization: Tailoring designs to specific audiences or unexpected client needs benefits from human adaptability.
• Emotional Impact and Storytelling: Creating designs that tell a story or evoke emotion requires deep understanding beyond ACE capabilities.

A few key observations:

1. Most of these activities aren’t profession-specific; they benefit from experience in the field but aren’t the field's core technical skills.
2. These skills are in short supply. For decades, senior executive surveys have highlighted these as critical for the future yet consistently identify them as areas of weakness in both new hires and experienced employees.
3. Common enablers for many of these activities are curiosity and critical thinking, also in short supply and particularly difficult to foster.

Based on our experience over the past year, we believe ACEs can significantly support many of these human-centric activities, but they serve as complements, not substitutes. Given decades of limited progress in fostering these skills in the workforce, there’s a growing risk that those who excel in them will enjoy outsized opportunities and rewards. By contrast, those lacking strengths in these areas may see their labor increasingly commoditized.

How can we address this risk in the workplace? Can we realistically teach these skills to our employees? If not, how can we collaborate with the education sector to make the change that has eluded us for so long?