When you think of AI at work, your first thoughts might be about the tools: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity. But lately, I’ve been thinking beyond the tech itself to what these tools mean for the future of work. In other words: the "people" part of the puzzle.

There’s no doubt that as AI becomes increasingly embedded in our daily workflows, a major shift is coming in what skills will matter most. So the question on many people’s minds is: how can we thrive in an AI-powered world? What abilities will be essential? And which ones are on their way out?

To explore that, I reached out to my friend and colleague, Trevor Maber. Trevor holds a PhD in Leadership, 25 years of experience in HR, and teaches at multiple universities. In short: he knows his stuff when it comes to understanding how technology shapes the workplace.

Trevor sees AI’s impact as an evolution in how we think about human contribution inside organizations. Those contributions are evolving from skill-based capabilities to something less defined. 

“There needs to be a new category,” Trevor told me. “Something like potential capability—the augmented capacity of an organization when enhanced by AI.”

This represents a whole new range of possibilities. The challenge is, we’re still in the early stages. “We’ve just started thinking about what this all means for organizations,” Trevor says.

Part of understanding that means acknowledging the emotional landscape: how people are really feeling about AI at work.

The emotions around AI right now

To get a temperature check, I asked knowledge workers, creative professionals, executives, and HR leaders how they felt about AI in the workplace. I ended up getting nearly 100 responses.

The results? A mixed bag of emotions. Curiosity and excitement were common, but so was caution.

Jessica Brackett, founder and lead artist of Orlando Mural Co. says she feels excited. "AI makes me a more creative artist, a clearer communicator, and a stronger collaborator." 

That collaboration goes both ways. "AI gives clients the power to visualize ideas themselves," she explains. A few months ago, a client reached out about a mural for her daughter's nursery. "She came to me with an image she had generated using AI of the feeling she wanted the mural to have. I was so grateful, because that saved me a lot of guesswork and ‘back and forth.’”

Jessica used that image as a jumping-off point for the final mural. The client loved it. The AI saved time, but "the true value still lies in the artist who reimagines those ideas and brings them to life on the wall... rolling up their sleeves and painting,” she says.

Meg Walker, Creative Director and founder of Ottilie Studio, describes her view as one of cautious optimism. She uses AI daily in her work, but remains wary of how it’s used. "It’s brilliant for research, writing prompts, and turning messy thoughts into clearer ones. But I’ve also seen it used in ways that feel rushed—copy-pasting content from elsewhere, skipping the strategy bit entirely, and leaving no room for creative input."

That strategy piece, she argues, is at the heart of what makes creative work valuable. "AI is shifting workplace value toward decision-making, judgment, and trust. It’s no longer just about what you can do quickly as it’s about how well you can steer, question, and guide systems that now do the ‘doing,’” she says.

The shifting definition of value in an AI powered workplace

This shift from doing to directing was echoed by many of the knowledge workers and leaders I heard from. Even the most advanced AI tools still need direction. They can execute, but they can’t determine what’s worth doing. The professionals who will thrive are those who can bring the missing pieces: creativity, judgment, and strategic insight.

As a result, AI is decreasing the value of some skills while increasing the value of others. “No one is going to hire you because you can do the skill the AI can do,” Trevor says. “It’s the capability piece—having a specific skill isn’t the end goal anymore.”

Trevor believes this change will hit some fields faster than others, depending on how capable current AI systems already are. “The 'Decline of Doing' is going to be really significant,” he says. “We’ll have to figure out how to navigate that. In some industries, it will be dramatic. In some fields, there will be no more human doers.”

In those areas, building new capabilities becomes essential. “We now need to get people the capabilities for what comes next,” Trevor adds.

So—what comes next?

Five recurring themes rose to the top.

Discernment and judgment

They say “there’s no accounting for taste,” but in an AI-powered world, taste is becoming a critical skill.

Software engineer Arnold Pinkhasov sees this shift firsthand at OS Labs, a tech accelerator where he works extensively with AI tools. "AI is shifting the definition of value from execution to intuition and taste," he says. "The new currency is judgment: knowing what to build, what to say no to, what resonates emotionally, and what drives long-term impact." You can cultivate that taste by exposing yourself purposely to excellence in your field. 

Discernment also includes our ability to make moral and values-based decisions: something that’s becoming more important, not less. “We can learn things like strategic thinking or emotional intelligence pretty quickly, but discernment is going to be a lot more difficult,” Trevor says.

That’s especially true as AI becomes embedded in everyday decisions that affect people’s lives. The more complex the challenge, the more human judgment matters.

Strategic thinking

As AI tools handle more of the “how,” what becomes more valuable is your ability to ask “why.”

“There's a broad interpretation of strategic thinking,” Trevor says. At its highest level, it includes systems thinking: seeing how different parts of the organization interconnect, understanding the ripple effects of decisions, taking into account the industry trends, and aligning actions with long-term goals.

But in a more practical sense, strategic thinking means seeing the bigger picture: understanding how your daily work contributes to specific business outcomes.

To do that, you need business acumen. Foundational to this acumen is a working knowledge of how your organization makes money and how your industry is evolving. When you understand the mechanics, you’re better able to contribute meaningfully and steer your work in the right direction.

A simple starting point: ask “why” before “how.” Before jumping into a task, take a moment to reflect. What business goal does this serve? How will this create value, generate revenue, or support long-term strategy? Building this habit shifts your role from executor to strategist, something no AI can fully replace.

Creative problem solving

We often talk about creativity as a personal trait, but creative problem solving is a critical capacity at the organizational level. That's because many of today’s challenges don’t come with ready-made playbooks. New customer behaviors, emerging technologies, shifting competitive landscapes: these aren’t problems you can solve by following a script. Instead, they require the ability to generate novel ideas, test hypotheses, and pivot quickly when Plan A doesn’t work.

To turn creative problem solving into a real organizational strength, leaders need to do more than encourage innovation in theory; they need to build the conditions for it in practice. That starts with fostering a culture of safe experimentation. When employees have room to explore what AI tools could do—without fear of failure—they’re more likely to discover unexpected, valuable uses. [See more about how to brainstorm and ideate with AI tools]

Curiosity, continuous learning, and adaptability

If creative problem solving is how we respond to today’s uncertainty, then curiosity, continuous learning, and adaptability are how we prepare for the uncertainty of tomorrow.

"We're in uncharted waters now," Trevor told me. With constant market disruption, he says organizations are going to need to adapt now more than ever. "We don't even know what kinds of jobs are going to exist in the future."

In the past, professionals could rely on a fixed skill set for years, sometimes decades. That’s no longer the case. Today, success depends on how quickly individuals and organizations can learn—and just as importantly, unlearn. What worked yesterday might not work tomorrow, and so the ability to evolve is no longer optional.

The value of continuous learning lies in its compound effect: organizations filled with curious, adaptable people move faster. They are able to respond more quickly to change and spot emerging opportunities. They also recover faster from setbacks because change doesn’t paralyze them, it energizes them.

Raihan Masroor, CEO of Your Doctors Online, put it simply: “Curiosity, speed, and accountability are now more important than perfect résumés.” The most valuable professionals are learning how to adapt and use new technology beyond their typical skill set.

Masroor shared an example from his team: a support representative recently automated 60% of her inbox using ChatGPT and a few basic scripts, which boosted response time and customer satisfaction. Her story is a glimpse of a broader shift: in the age of AI, initiative and adaptability often matter more than job titles or technical credentials.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence and collaboration have become increasingly valuable as jobs become more cross-functional and teams become more interdependent. 

These kinds of human-focused skills have always been important, especially for leaders. That's because modern business challenges rarely have simple, technical solutions that one person can solve in isolation. Instead, they require cross-functional teams, stakeholder alignment, and the ability to navigate diverse perspectives and competing priorities. Success depends on understanding team dynamics, which often means managing conflict constructively and building consensus around shared goals.

Developing these skills requires facing complexity in the real world. “Put people into challenging situations. Have them interact with others in complicated environments,” he says. “That’s what builds the experience they’ll need to thrive in an AI-powered workplace.”

AI literacy

Complementing the essential human skills is one increasingly critical technical ability: knowing how to effectively use AI. Being AI literate doesn’t mean you have to become a programmer or data scientist. For most professionals, it means understanding how AI tools work and guiding them to produce the results you need.

“The best way to future-proof your career is to become AI-augmented, not AI-anxious,” says Himanshu Bhatia, marketing lead at OttoKit. He emphasizes the importance of learning to prompt effectively, design AI-powered workflows, and pair judgment with automation. 

“Most importantly, stay curious and results-oriented,” he adds. “The people who thrive in the AI era aren’t necessarily the most technical—they’re the most open-minded, experimental, and driven by outcomes.”

As AI tools become deeply embedded in how we work, being able to work with them will become a foundational skill on par with writing, presenting, or critical thinking. It’s the skill that will separate those who simply use AI from those who thrive alongside it in the years to come.

The future

Looking ahead ten years, a clear pattern emerged: most believe our relationship with AI will evolve dramatically over the next decade.

Rather than being viewed solely as a disruption, many respondents believed our relationship with AI will, over time, become more familiar and less fraught. Some see AI as a trusted partner, others as invisible infrastructure like Wi-Fi or electricity.

Still, that shift won’t happen by accident. It depends on how we, as individuals and organizations, choose to move forward.

"It's human nature to first figure out how to survive," Trevor says. "Our first inclination is 'Can we resist it?'" That’s where many people are right now: navigating change with a protective instinct.

But survival, while necessary, isn’t the end goal. "At some point, that surviving has to shift into thriving. That's where the biggest potential is."

Thriving in the AI era will mean developing a set of deeply human skills: emotional intelligence, strategic judgment, curiosity, adaptability, and pairing them with AI literacy. That might sound like a tall order, but Trevor is optimistic.

"We think that all the potential of this AI revolution is in the technology," he says. "But I think it's in the people. In the humanity."

That’s the part we too often overlook. Alongside this technology revolution is a human one. And when we come through it, we won’t just have faster tools or better systems, we’ll have grown, too.

As AI reshapes what machines can do, we’ll be forced to reconsider what only humans can do and start investing in those capacities like never before. Creativity. Discernment. Emotional intelligence. The ability to inspire, interpret, persuade, and synthesize across complexity. These are the future’s most strategic skills to build.

That future won’t arrive overnight. But with the right mindset and the right skills, we can build it. AI might be reshaping the workplace, but it’s still people who shape the future.