The skills people still perform better than AI, according to workplace experts

(AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)

NEW YORK — Many workers fear machines will supplant them as adoption of artificial intelligence accelerates.

But what if people have qualities both unmistakably human and essential to career success that AI could not easily replace them?

Some workplace experts argue that with more businesses adopting AI tools, soft skills such as empathy, critical thinking and ethical decision-making are worth cultivating to help employees become indispensable.

Across industries and occupations, “the skills that are most resistant to displacement by AI are the ones that are the most distinctly human,” Maria Flynn, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit focused on workforce development, said. “Some of those things are relationship building, conflict resolution, the ability to guide and motivate other people and ethical judgment.”

Even in job listings for technical roles such as IT support, organizations say they’re looking for candidates who communicate well and take leadership initiative, Flynn said.

“We started to use the term ‘durable skills’ and think about them as capabilities that really are durable, in that they hold their value across economic shifts and technological change and labor market disruption,” she said. “And we think, especially now, in this time of AI advancement, that it’s the durable skills that really make a worker genuinely valuable at work, regardless of what tools and technology are available.”

Here are five skills to cultivate based on the areas where experts say humans still hold an edge over artificial intelligence.

Empathy

Interpreting body language and reading between the lines to decipher what wasn’t explicitly communicated are skills that many people find are best performed by humans. They also inform the ability to show empathy, and being sensitive to the feelings of others is a sought-after trait in workers.

Marco Iansiti, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, said he saw that firsthand during a hospital stay.

“A nurse has incredibly human impacts. Feeling, relating to the patient, the type of care that is so important,” Iansiti said. “I remember times when I was sick in the hospital and the nurse was like the godsend. Would I have let a robot do the same thing? No. There was a human connection there that I found very valuable.”

Where AI could be helpful in a hospital setting is by taking on mundane tasks such as paperwork, freeing up time for nurses to provide compassionate patient care, he said.

“There’s a lot of systems that are being deployed now that I think are very effective in doing this and essentially release healthcare workers to do the things that they should be doing and do best.”

Nurturing relationships

Building strong personal ties with colleagues, clients and stakeholders remains a prized skill that experts say artificial intelligence models have difficulty replicating. Salespeople, for example, have files or databases with information they’ve learned about their clients from interacting face-to-face.

“You have people that have trusted you and have bought products from you for the last 10 years. That has value and that’s hard to transfer to artificial intelligence,” Iansiti said.

Interpersonal skills also are invaluable when conflicts arise. “Having that human in the loop to manage those expectations, to ease any ruffled feathers, to build the type of relationships that are needed, to expedite good work, is still going to be critical,” Flynn said.

Conflict resolution is a must-have quality for managers, said Colleen Adler, director analyst in the human resources practice at the Gartner consulting firm.

“People do still have managers, and managers and leaders impact the way they feel, and co-workers impact the ways we feel as well,” Adler said. ”There is still a tone to AI that does not yet mimic human connection. That could change; I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Work environments are rapidly changing and many employees feel like they’re lurching from one difficult dynamic to another, Adler said. While AI agents can’t help workers feel better about that uncertainty, strong leaders can help their teams, she added.

Critical thinking

Artificial intelligence models collect information and produce responses but can generate inaccuracies, so it’s important to second-guess its output. Developing deep knowledge about your field can help you notice when the AI-generated results on topics from your industry are incorrect, said Amalia Kaufman, course developer and instructor at the University of California, Irvine Division of Continuing Education.

“You have to have the cognition and the critical thinking and the subject matter expertise to make sense of it, and to know when it’s wrong,” Kaufman said. “You have to check your facts.”

In a study published in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford tested 11 popular AI systems and found that artificial intelligence chatbots were prone to flattering and validating the feelings of users, affirming a user’s actions 49 per cent more often than humans did. Taking a step back and applying critical thinking skills when reading results generated by AI can help combat the tendency for it to be overly agreeable with its users.

Having a conscience

The ability to distinguish right from wrong, or listen to one’s inner conscience, is a skill that is innately human, experts said.

Sometimes, people rely on sensations in their bodies to help guide their decision-making. “Gut feelings are something you feel in your gut,” Iansiti said. “It’s not just a pattern of information that’s going through your brain. It is actually an emotional reaction that is intrinsically different from the way that AI operates. At least this generation of AI.”

When life-or-death decisions have to be made, such as when to use lethal military force, “do you want something that does not have human emotion, it does not have a body attached with the intelligence?” Iansiti asked. “AI can fake having a conscience because it’s read about what a conscience is, but it doesn’t have a conscience.”

People can build parameters, or guardrails, into artificial intelligence models to help AI agents make ethical decisions, he said. But human input is still required.

“It’s very hard to design a model that’s ethical for everything. It’s much better to build it around a specific use case. Say hiring,” Iansiti said.

Judgement calls

Ethical questions aren’t the only ones that AI is less equipped to handle for now. The capacity to come up with creative ideas and make decisions in ambiguous situations — while mapping out strategies or developing a brand identity, for example — is another important human skill, experts said.

“We don’t believe that’s something that’s going to be replicated by artificial intelligence,” said Heather Stefanski, chief learning and development officer at management consulting firm McKinsey. “If we’re all just using the AI answer to problem-solve, how are you really going to be distinctive?”

Humans make judgment calls based on a constellation of knowledge and lived experiences, Flynn said. Artificial intelligence draws from a lot of data but doesn’t necessarily work well in gray areas, Flynn said. For now, the ability to see all angles of an issue and add context remains a form of intelligence that people possess to a greater extent than AI, she said.

“The things that make us uniquely human to me are going to continue to be the things that help our society thrive in productive ways,” Flynn said. “And making sure that we are calling those things out, paying attention to them, making sure those are attributes that folks can name and articulate and feel good about, is going to be key as we all navigate a rapidly changing future.”

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Cathy Bussewitz, The Associated Press