Automation and Artificial Intelligence are two of the hottest topics in business circles. It has divided the world into two halves. One group thinks that AI will take your jobs and make you jobless while the other faction thinks that AI will create more jobs than it takes. Both are true to a certain degree. In this article, we will discuss 7 valuable skills to help you stay relevant in the age of AI.
According to a study conducted by Forrester, 10% of jobs in the US have already been automated. This trend will continue and we might see half of the jobs automated by 2030, according to McKinsey predictions. If you are an employee then, this could give you some sleepless nights. Not only that, artificial intelligence has transformed human resources as well.
Thankfully, all hope is not lost. There are many skills you can learn to not only survive but also thrive in the automation era. If you want to stay relevant, you should keep an eye on emerging recruitment trends and stay abreast of automation and AI news.
Without further ado, here are 7 skills that will help you survive in the age of AI.
1. Communication
With the human attention span at an all-time low combined with the bombardment of ads and information we are exposed to, grabbing the attention and persuading them to take action has become extremely difficult. That is where communication skills can come in handy. The ability to tell a compelling story, which your audience can connect to and inspires them to take the desired action is critical for success. Even though efforts are underway to create robots who can communicate like humans but there is still a long way to go until we will see that concept materialize.
2. Building Connections
As our world becomes more connected, isolation will become a thing of the past. The focus of businesses would be to build new connections. Irrespective of how strong or weak their ties might be, having more connections helps you access different organizations and industries.
Research has shown that the number of weak ties is one of the biggest differentiating factors between C-Suite executives and CEOs. They know that the more connections they have, the more people they can connect with. In most cases, the people you connect with might have more connections than you do and it gives you an opportunity to get in touch with people you didn’t know. Even though you can still make connections using social media but at the end of the day, it is the humans behind who are controlling it.
3. Content
If you follow automation and AI-related news lately, you might have come across news telling you that you are reading news stories crafted by robots. You can easily find a difference between content and news pieces written by robots and humans. Robots can not pour emotions into writing because they are emotionless. But a human can which is why humans are able to emotionally connect with their readers through their content pieces.
Robots will even struggle to cope with some of the biggest digital marketing challenges while humans can do it with little effort. A digital agency can build authority by sharing their knowledge and expertise and achieve better content exposure and higher rankings on search engines than content created by a robot does. In order to thrive in the age of AI, content is KEY!
4. Emotional intelligence
Despite all the advancements in the field of AI, machines still struggle when it comes to understanding emotions. Without creating an emotional connection with your target audience, you can never force them to take your desired action. Similarly, if you are using an AI-based system to take employee-related decisions such as promoting employees or firing employees, you will end up neglecting the emotional factors involved in decision making.
5. Teaching
No one can deny the contributions machines have already made to enhance the quality of education and make it accessible for everyone, but AI finds it tough when it has to understand the context of personal development. As a result, they might not be suitable for teaching jobs as teachers must have a clear understanding of the context within the organization.
Ben Horowitz, who was a product management director at Netscape realized that most managers are complaining about the workload. To resolve this issue, he wrote a short handbook called “Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager” After teaching, training and clearing the expectations, the same team started performing extremely well and soon became the highest performing team in the organization. That’s the difference a little bit of training and teaching can make. An AI would never make a decision of writing or teaching if it finds itself in a similar situation.
6. Context
Another area where machines lag humans is in the understanding of context. That is not all, they also do not fare too well when it comes to understanding the business model, analyzing the competition and clients and its leaders. On the other hand, humans can do a much better job at it. For instance, a human would send a different pitch to an investor than a robot because he or she understands not only the business dynamics but also the context. This means that the chances of the human pitch getting accepted are much higher than that of a robot.
7. Ethics
As machines become more intelligent, businesses are also worried about the ethical consequences they can have. Systems that rely on algorithms to make moral judgments find themselves lacking as these algorithms are not designed to help with this. Imagine a robot driving a car and they come across a situation where they must decide between hitting a bus in front of them or avoiding the bus by moving towards the sidewalk with some school children walking on it. The only way to train machines to cope up with such situations is to use humans along with machines. As a result, they will slowly learn which course of action they should take in such a situation.
I hope you enjoyed this article on 7 key skills to will help you survive in the age of AI.
Which skills do you think won’t be automated very soon? Let us know in the comments section below.
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