I feel that the power of seeing “eye to eye” is even more meaningful with AI lurking around. It seems many headlines focus these days on AI taking over jobs. Or major companies announcing mass layoffs. Although we can’t know the exact reason behind some of these layoffs, I think AI is one possible consideration. This all results in some of us, with decades of working years left in our careers, to contemplate what AI-proof skills can we develop to avoid obsoletion.
Naturally some skills that keep coming up are the ones that require human-to-human interaction. This includes things such as presentation, persuasion, communicating, influencing, and negotiating. All of these kinds of activities require humans to talk to other humans. This is the case even if AI is preparing all of the materials, arguments, rationales, and graphics. For some situations, it requires a human to interact with another human for that special, delicate touch. Learning how to persuade people and get buy in can be challenging. There is a lot of nuance and preparation involved to know how to handle each scenario. Though I’m sure an AI agent can learn to do these things, probably in mere minutes, some people may prefer to interact with another person.
On the flip side, opportunities to develop these skills may also become harder to find. With so much of our communication happening without face-to-face interaction, even practicing the most basic courtesies is not happening. For the younger generation, some of these basic skills may not even be learned. Digital communication through text and chat could also be happening with a machine on the other side. Unless a company discloses that you’re interacting with a chatbot, you might not always realize. I find most of the time it’s pretty easy to tell when I’m dealing with a chatbot, but the technology is improving all the time. I’m sure in a couple of years, I’ll be having conversations with automated agents and not even realize it’s not a human on the other end.
I’m sure the agent replacement is coming, but for the moment let’s hope that at least some interactions still rely on humans.