Human Potential in an AI-Driven World

As AI takes on more analytical work, the skills that set people apart will be the ones rooted in being human. 

In this Gamechanger Interview, Ajay Manissery Konchery, the CEO of Wisdom Tomorrow, recently appointed as the Co-Managing Director at Epic Group, a sustainable fashion and apparel manufacturing multinational company, joins Victor Filamor, Partner at Stanton Chase Greater China, to share his view on where human potential is heading as AI takes on more analytical work. 

What Skills Can AI Not Replace?

Ajay separates the future into a predictable part and an unpredictable one. The predictable part rests on embodied skills, the abilities that come from awareness of living in a human body that is fragile and perishable. Relating to another person, empathy, reading emotion, and communicating in the right tone at the right moment all fall into this group, along with self-awareness and certain kinds of creativity. A song or a poem that reaches human emotion, in his view, sits at the highest level of creativity, and it will stay something people are expected to deliver. 

Which Jobs are Safe from AI?

Some work does not depend on awareness of the body. Analysis, coding, programming, and data interpretation, Ajay notes, sit comfortably with AI, so competing there is a losing game for people. The roles that hold up are the ones built on the embodied skills, from leadership and coaching to creative and relationship-driven work, where human judgment and emotion carry the value that machines cannot supply. 

How Will AI Affect Jobs and the Workforce?

The stakes are visible in the Stanton Chase survey, where 62% of executives expect between 6% and 30% of their workforce to exit or move into new roles within five years, rising to 50% of technology respondents who expect a shift of 16% or more. At the same time, 43% of organizations have told their employees nothing about how AI will change their jobs. Ajay’s point is that the people who invest early in the skills machines cannot copy are the ones who move into the roles that remain. 

What Will Leadership Look Like in an AI-Driven World?

Ajay suggests that the leader of the future will be the more empathetic, creative, and self-aware connector, someone who senses how stakeholders feel and links people and systems together, rather than the most analytical person in the room, since analysis is a contest with AI that people will lose. He closes on the part he cannot predict, which is what happens if AI moves closer to something like consciousness, at which point the question of uniquely human skills opens up again. 

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