The Future is AI?
The pace of AI development and adoption is staggering. Tools that were experimental just months ago are now standard in workplaces and classrooms. Whether you are a recent college graduate or a mid-career professional, you have good reason to be concerned. Many jobs are already being reshaped or replaced. But there is hope for humans with careers and mortgages, and it starts by focusing on what AI cannot do.
For all its advances, AI lacks a body, emotions, intuition, and the ability to form real human relationships. The skills that AI will always fail to authentically replicate, what I call Uniquely Human Capacities (UHCs), are where humans retain an enduring advantage. These include intuition, ethical reasoning, compassion, collaboration, storytelling, aesthetic judgment, and other embodied ways of making meaning.
While AI may soon outperform humans in coding, data analysis, mathematics, design, and even research, it cannot truly empathize or connect. It cannot engage morally or creatively in the same way a human can. These capacities are not just interesting philosophical ideas—they are now practical career necessities.
What Employers Are Looking For
Many employers understand this. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) outlines eight career readiness competencies for success. Seven of the eight—communication, teamwork, critical thinking, leadership, professionalism, equity and inclusion, and career self-development—are fundamentally human. Only one, technology, directly involves technical skills. This doesn’t mean tech skills don’t matter. It means they must be used in support of, not instead of, our human ones.
To make time for developing these Uniquely Human Capacities, carefully examine your daily tasks and identify those that are currently or soon automatable. Then mindfully reduce, delegate, or automate them to free space for growth. This includes skills often emphasized today such as basic coding, routine analysis, administrative work, bookkeeping, and standard content or presentation creation that AI is already automating or will soon. It’s also important to spend less time mastering narrowly focused software—like individual accounting programs, CRM platforms, PowerPoint, or Excel—that AI can soon perform or integrate across. By shifting focus away from these tasks, you seize this exciting opportunity to develop capacities that bring sustainability, meaning, connection, and personal fulfillment to your work and life.
| Technical Skills OUT ❌ | Uniquely Human Capacities IN ✅ |
|---|---|
| Basic coding | Mindfulness, intuition, and compassion |
| Data entry and bookkeeping | Ethical judgment and critical thinking |
| Routine data analysis | Storytelling and meaning making |
| Administrative tasks | Collaboration and leadership |
| Mastery of single-purpose software (e.g., PowerPoint, Excel, accounting apps) | Authentic use of and expertise with generative AI |
Build Uniquely Human Capacities
UHCs are rooted in the human body. They emerge from direct, embodied experience: face-to-face conversation, listening deeply, embracing ambiguity, being present with others, and responding with compassion.
Mindfulness is the foundation of UHCs. This is not just meditation, but a consistent practice of attention, curiosity, openness, and non-judgment. Mindfulness helps us notice, accept, and understand our feelings and perception, clarify our thinking, and engage with the world morally and compassionately. It’s how we become better listeners, mentors, collaborators, creators, and leaders.
Lifelong learners can build UHCs outside the classroom, at home and at work, especially with others. Read quality literature. Reflect on experiences in a journal. Join communities of practice. Engage with art and music. Volunteer in a way that stretches your empathy. Work with others on something that makes the world better. These are not distractions from your career—they are career and personal development.
Use AI critically, as a tool for growth, not a shortcut. AI can serve as a tutor and editor, challenging your thinking, questioning assumptions, and highlighting blind spots in your reasoning. But be cautious: using AI to bypass difficult work can weaken the very human capacities we need to develop.
Risks
There are real risks. As AI systems improve, they may mimic empathy, ethical judgment, and creativity well enough to pass. Hiring practices may shift even further toward automation, especially at the entry level and for high-performing roles that are expensive to staff. And with AI largely controlled by for-profit corporations, we should expect access to the more powerful AI tools may become even more of a privilege reserved to for the already privileged.
A Human-Centered Future
The most resilient path forward is also the most fulfilling: by developing our uniquely human capacities, we create opportunities and value that will endure regardless of how AI evolves. This once-in-a-generation moment invites us to redefine not just our careers but also what it means to be human. As we develop these Uniquely Human Capacities, we build lives and careers that are meaningful, connected, and true to who we are and in service of something greater than ourselves.
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-woman-playing-chess-8438956/