3 Superhuman Talents AI will not replace

In this article recently published in Harvard Business Review, Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Reece Akhtar, remind us of what makes us unique as humans and where AI cannot compete. Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup and Professor of Business Psychology at both University College London, and Columbia University. He was a key note speaker at the forthcoming Ibec HR Leadership Summit - ‘Intelligent Workplaces’ on 25 October at the Dublin Royal Convention Centre. 

3 Super talents AI will not replace

By Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic & Reece Akhtar

First published in Harvard Business Review 28 May 2023

 Summary.

Will the new AI tools we’ve all heard so much about eliminate your job prospects before you even get started? Don’t worry too much. You can have a meaningful, exciting, and even creative career. But in order to succeed and stand out from your peers, you’ll need to learn how to leverage these new tools and cultivate these three skills that machines can’t replace.

1. Curiosity: Don’t let AI make you boring, biased, predictable, or narrow-minded. Get curious and invest the time to learn how you can offload boring tasks onto AI. But don’t fall into an AI-driven routine. Use AI tools to inspire you and make you more inquisitive about the world beyond them.
2. Humility: Don’t let AI undermine your self-awareness. Start by getting to know the real you. Ask yourself: What behaviors come most naturally to me? What inspires me? What gets in my way? Then, ask others for feedback. AI is incredibly good at adapting and accepting feedback — you should be too. Ask others what you should start doing, stop doing, and keep doing.
3. Emotional Intelligence: Don’t forget what it means to be human. Your ability to build connections, practice empathy, and communicate effectively (your emotional intelligence) matters more than ever. Before sharing an opinion or making a decision, pause and think about your teammates. Are you working in service of the team’s goals, or your own? To avoid conflict, be extra attentive when communicating digitally. Digital communication often leads to impulsive, cold, and antisocial exchanges whereby conflict emerges.close

You made it through college and got your degree. Now, it’s time to take the corporate world by storm. But wait — will the new AI tools we’ve all heard so much about eliminate your job prospects before you even get started?

Don’t worry too much. The AI age will actually create many new human jobs — more so than it replaces. You can have a meaningful, exciting, and even creative career. But in order to succeed and stand out from your peers, you’ll need to learn how to leverage these new tools and cultivate the skills machines can’t replace.

As business psychologists, we spend a great deal of time studying the attributes that help people get ahead at work. Our research suggests that there are three critical talents AI is unlikely to replace, and that harnessing these talents is key to thriving in the future AI age.

Curiosity: Don’t let AI make you boring, biased, predictable, or narrow-minded.

AI continues to influence more and more aspects of our lives. On almost every digital platform — from social media and streaming services to mobile apps and the sites we browse online — AI algorithms have the capability to automate our decisions and influence our attention, making us more predictable, less creative, and quite simply, increasingly boring creatures.

You may think you’re immune to all this if you’re not seeking a job in tech, but no matter what discipline you majored, AI is coming to (and for) your industry. Today, historically human-centric professions are also being impacted by smart technologies. ChatGPT, for example, can write marketing copy, craft poems, and provide sound business advice. Google has a tool that generates music. Midjourney is producing award-winning art. Some creators are even using AI to revive cult-classic sitcoms.

Instead of letting this scare you, let it inspire your curiosity. After all, curiosity is one human trait that AI has yet to successfully mimic. Use your naturally inquisitive nature to brainstorm how you can benefit from these tools. If done thoughtfully, you can leverage AI to improve your productivity and performance in any field. This will help you stand out from your peers — especially from those who may dismiss or ignore this technology.

Here’s how to get started.

1. Explore these new tools, ask questions, and get creative.

Brainstorm a list of tasks you’d like help with, such as some of the more routine, uncreative, and repetitive tasks on your to-do list. That’s exactly the work that AI is designed for. OpenAI allows anyone to create a free account and is one way to begin experimenting. On this platform, you can ask AI to complete different tasks for you. For example, you can use ChatGPT to help craft copy for newsletters, analyze data, and even write presentations. (You may have to play around to craft the perfect prompt, but that’s part of the learning experience.)

You’ll quickly realize that — although it’s not full proof — AI often takes new approaches to solving familiar problems, and it can help you solve problems that you have no training or knowledge about. By getting curious and investing the time to learn how you can offload boring tasks onto AI, you’ll be rewarded with more time and mental energy to do the things that AI can’t — building relationships, thinking strategically, and being truly original.

 2. Don’t fall into an AI-driven routine.

Although it’s important to explore new AI tools, be mindful of overdoing it. The last thing you want is AI to begin automating your entire life. While AI may temporarily satiate your intellectual hunger, tools like ChatGPT are equivalent to fast food: They can give you instant gratification but can also easily be misused and addictive. It’s hard for us humans to be curious about everyday experiences when we are immersed in routine, repetitive, and familiar activities. Instead, think of AI tools as seeds that are meant to sprout your more original curiosity, imagination, and creativity. Use them to inspire you and make you more inquisitive about the world beyond them.

To avoid falling down the rabbit hole of an AI-driven life, intentionally pull yourself away from it. Attend a networking event in-person, take a different route on your daily walk, or try out a new hobby. Engage in deliberate wondering and deep exploration. These new experiences can also stimulate your hungry mind and increase your appetite for understanding and learning.

 Humility: Don’t let AI undermine your self-awareness.

The more data AI receives, the more accurate it becomes at predicting our desires and preferences. AI lulls us into a false sense of security by only serving us the content that we want to see and the ideas that we already agree with — it’s classic groupthink and confirmation bias. Left unchallenged, it can make you stagnant and overconfident. That’s what it’s so important to investigate the content you consume, challenge yourself to consider different and diverse points of view, and really get to know yourself beyond what AI is telling you.

The truth is, we are all inherently flawed — no one is perfect at everything. For example, maybe you struggle with communicating your ideas but don’t realize it because everyone on your social media feed seems to “get you.” It’s okay to have weaknesses and areas in need of improvement, but failing to identify and manage these gaps in your skillset will lead to poor decision-making, strained working relationships, and unnecessary conflict. That’s why practicing humility and expanding your self-awareness, two things AI can’t do, is so important. Here’s how:

 1. Get to know yourself.

Career success is equal parts hard work, luck, and knowing how to apply your talents. To achieve the latter, you must develop a deep awareness of your personality. Estimates suggest that 90% of people lack self-awareness at work. Your goal is to be in the 10% of people who do. Ask yourself: What behaviors come most naturally to me? What inspires me? What gets in my way? Taking a scientific personality assessment can also give you the data to reflect on and answer these questions. You don’t necessarily need to change your personality, but learning how to manage it is an essential part of being a successful employee and person.

As you reflect on these answers, try to identify gaps between the person you are on an everyday basis, the person others see you as, and the person you would like to be. AI tools can actually help you on your self-awareness journey. For instance, when your phone notifies you that you haven’t gotten up in a while, or your smart watch says you’re not getting enough sleep, you may feel a sense of guilt. Investigate that feeling. Are you not acting according to your own ethical or lifestyle standards? Is there anything you can change to get closer to that version of yourself?

 2. Ask for feedback.

AI is incredibly good at adapting and accepting feedback — you should be too. Getting accurate feedback, and knowing how to act on it, will enable you to target personal improvement areas that will have the biggest impact on your career. Unfortunately, 83% of young professionals never receive meaningful feedback from their managers. That’s why you may have to take things into your own hands. Email your closest colleagues, asking three questions:

1. What should I start doing?
2. What should I stop doing?
3. What should I keep doing?

Be clear that you’re looking for honesty — not just about yourself, but about how you can improve your skills in relation to your changing industry. This will help you build a strategic career plan that prepares you for major job challenges and the emergence of new AI tools.

Emotional Intelligence: Don’t forget what it means to be human.

Just like the industrial revolution mechanized physical labor, AI is mechanizing intellectual capital. As a result, your ability to build connections, practice empathy, and communicate effectively (your emotional intelligence) matters more than ever.

So much of our formal education is spent growing our knowledge and intellectual capital, while our social and emotional development is often overlooked. As you start out in your career, practice these two things to give your emotional intelligence a boost:

 1. Focus on others just as much as yourself.

Think about how much time you currently spend in meetings or communicating with others. This will only increase as AI shifts the emphasis of work from doing to coordinating. In the age of AI, the organizations that will be most successful will be those whose teams can work effectively together. As you kickstart your career, you will be tempted to put yourself first. It may seem necessary as you attempt to grow, but remember: To get ahead, you must get along.

Before sharing an opinion or making a decision, pause and think about your teammates. Are you working in service of the team’s goals, or your own? At first, you will have to remind yourself to ask this question. But eventually, your empathy skills will become second nature. As a rule of thumb, prioritizing other people’s goals and interests is the best way to help you achieve your own, for you will turn them into allies.

 2. Learn to deal with conflict.

To be employable in the age of AI, you have to be likeable. No one wants to work with people who are rude, untrustworthy, and inconsiderate — and AI tools make it even easier not to. That’s why it’s so important to learn how to handle conflict effectively, be more cooperative, and avoid arguments when possible. One way to do so is to be extra attentive when communicating digitally, especially over email or messaging. So many of our interactions with others are technologically mediated, which leads to impulsive, cold, and antisocial exchanges whereby conflict emerges. Even those who would naturally express warmth and kindness to others are nudged into being aggressive (at times passively so) when communicating digitally.

The extra shield of our devices causes us to forget our empathy for others and unleash our uninhibited and uncensored self. So before sending a message to your coworker, remind yourself that you’re dealing with a human on the other side. When conflicts emerge, try to understand their perspective so you can move forward together. AI will only continue to make communication among humans more detached — but people will always crave working with others who are calm, cool-headed, and able to de-escalate conflicts. There’s no question AI will win the IQ race, but EQ will remain quintessentially and uniquely human, even if AI learns to fake empathy and consideration.

. . .

As AI matches human-level intelligence, the challenge of standing out when looking for your first big job or promotion has never been greater. You shouldn’t ignore these advancements — after all, there isn’t an industry that will be left untouched by AI. Your challenge is to be proactive in investing in yourself. If you stay curious, practice humility, and focus on others, you will be well positioned to thrive in these exciting times.

First published in Harvard Business Review 28 May 2023