The jobs AI won’t take

In the very near future, nearly every human worker will have a new colleague: artificial intelligence. Some job displacement is inevitable, but that will only shift the focus to work that requires uniquely human qualities, like social and emotional intelligence, imagination, and creativity. The people that will excel in the coming economy may be the ones who prepare themselves for jobs that only a human can do.

Mind work
AI and automation are coming for jobs… but that doesn’t mean you’ll be without one. Fast Company has some ideas:

• Focus on human intelligence. Different from the hard-knowledge intelligence of AI systems, humans excel at creativity and social and emotional intelligence. Jobs of the future will put a premium on these qualities.
• Make AI better. Instead of fighting AI, humans can constantly make AI better and act as a final arbiter on decisions or tasks made by the tech. At the end of the day, someone will need to answer why AI behaves the way it does.
• Allow tech to connect. Not from tech to tech, but human to human. AI can help catalyze language translation and work collaboration much more efficiently, acting as a powerful augment to interpersonal communication.
• Imagination reigns supreme. With AI set to increase productivity by an estimated 40% in the U.S., people will have more time to focus on jobs that value imaginative work, such as the arts, philosophy, and politics.

At the end of the day, the rise of AI will (hopefully) not be an “us vs. them” paradigm, but instead, the next evolution in humans working alongside technology to work — in the words of Daft Punk — “harder, better, faster, stronger.”