7 Skills that cannot be Replicated by Artificial Intelligence
The Corona pandemic has accelerated the digital push at a considerable pace. The IT companies and services companies are imagining a new world where human interactions will give way to digital services. As per BBC News, jobs lost to automation stats in 2020 show that up to 800 million roles could be phased out. Artificial intelligence technology & use of industrial robots are replacing several jobs that are done by humans today.
The contactless technologies and services are ruling the world. And this is just the start of the fourth industrial revolution. Companies and governments around the world have become more comfortable with technology, data, cloud, automation and artificial intelligence. They are working towards enabling their services using technology that reduces face to face human interactions. In doing so, many traditional jobs are being replaced by technology.
While some jobs are more susceptible to automation than others. A study by Mckinsey on the future of women at work shows that clerical work, secretaries, bookkeepers, office assistants, schedulers, etc. are highly prone to automation. There are 72% women employed in these jobs in advanced economies.
A 2019 World Bank report on the changing nature of work argues technology and automation creates new jobs. Many of the jobs that don’t exist today will be created due to automation and technology advances. There will be impact on low and mid skilled jobs due to AI and automation. However, in the long run, the net productivity gains will lead to wealth creation and new jobs. One-third of new jobs today didn’t exist 30 years ago.
Professionals who are highly skilled, adaptive and reinvent themselves as per needs are less likely to lose their jobs. Here’s a look at skills that will be hard to replace with AI and technology.
1. Creativity & Innovations
Artificial intelligence is now used for composing music, creating paintings & even writing books. But creativity and innovation is an area where human beings are highly skillful. They have the ability to create novel work better than tools and technologies.
Inventing new things and coming up with creative solutions are rare skills that are hard to replicate. In all job areas, people who are highly effective at problem solving using creativity and innovations will be in demand.
2. Team Building
It takes a deep understanding of human beings, their cultural values and connecting with them to build a team. Great teams are built by humans who understand others and bond people together for a cause.
Defining the culture of an organisation, inculcating the values & achieving excellence as a team are rare skills. While the productivity measures and assessments can be done by AI and robots, it takes great skills to build a team that produces great feats.
3. Solution Selling
Sales managers who are successful understand what their customers want, even before they tell them. They have a deep understanding of their customer’s pain points. They are not superficial, but devise strategies to sell solutions to their customers.
Solution selling is a hard skill to replace. It requires understanding the context, environment, navigating authorities, office politics and proposing the right solution for the clients. Great sales people understand and master these traits. These skills can’t be replicated easy with automation. While technology can assist the sales process, for B2B sales and B2G deals, sales managers will be hard to replace.
4. Software Development
The demand for software development is on the rise. The field is expected to grow 19% by 2024. Software development is not easily replaced by Robots/AI. As organisations are looking to automate, digitise and build technology solutions, creating software for them remains a lucrative job.
There are low end software jobs and skills that are being replaced by automation. But building technology solutions as per the needs of the changing business needs is a rare skill. Maintaining, supporting and upgrading softwares also requires skills and expertise not easily replaced by automation.
5. Relationships & Partnerships
One of the greatest things about human beings is their ability to understand others. Humans are naturally wired to connect with each other. They build relationships and partnerships better than machines can.
The ability to build deep and meaningful relationships in business is crucial. Whether it is dealing with customers or teams, empathy is a rare trait. Studies done by Harvard have shown that empathy is one of the most crucial traits of successful leaders. Empathy for customers, building new relationships and partnerships in area where humans excel over technology.
6. Building New Products & Systems
Companies need to build new products and systems as per their changing business needs. They often need to come up with new business models and design innovative systems to chart their way forward. In such situations, leadership and ability to architect solutions is required.
The ability to come up with innovative systems, build new products and solutions requires human intelligence. Artificial intelligence and technology can assist with data inputs and strategies, but human beings are preferred to design and build new products.
7. Policy & Planning
Policy making and planning requires a careful study of the available resources, evaluate constraints, dynamic priorities and devise strategies for effectively meeting the demands. This is needed for corporates, governments and other organisations as well. The policy making and planning is another area of human excellence, where technology hasn’t yet made a deep impact.
It requires great leadership and skills to devise policies and plan for meeting organisation objectives. While technology is playing a role by creating real time dashboards for the data available, providing inputs and pointers, leadership is hard to be replaced with automation.
Kreyon Systems has wealth of experience in architecting artificial intelligence software for enterprises and governments. If you need any assistance in implementation or have queries, please get in touch with us.