When AI automates traditional aspects of work, we risk losing the very ability to think and learn critical skills¡ªor do we? Â鶹´«Ã½¡¯s chief learning officer has a perspective that may turn your AI hesitations into a thing of the past.
Maria Valero
Editorial Strategist, HR
Â鶹´«Ã½
We hear it all the time: AI will make us faster, more efficient, and more productive. But for HR leaders, there's a quieter, more important question bubbling under the surface: In the rush to automate and implement, are we accidentally training our people to think less instead of more?
reveals that nearly half of employees are worried that leaning too much on AI could actually dull their critical thinking skills. Luckily, Â鶹´«Ã½¡¯s Chief Learning Officer, Chris Ernst, is already on the case; he recently had about this very issue.
Ernst sees this deskilling dilemma not as a problem, but as an important wake-up call. While yes, business growth will always be of utmost priority, it¡¯s up to the HR function and leaders to ensure that productivity gains aren¡¯t just an advantage for the bottom line, but also for employees¡ªand you can¡¯t have one without the other.
AI empowers our people to carefully sharpen and cultivate the uniquely human skills that drive innovation: curiosity, creativity, and human ingenuity. If we only focus on productivity, our focus is far too narrow to capture the full breadth of value that AI has to offer. Here are Ernst¡¯s main takeaways.
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Since AI¡¯s debut into the world of work, the headlines view it through the limiting lens of cutting costs and boosting productivity. But Ernst believes that's a mistake.
While these AI use cases serve as fantastic levers for instant gratification and the illusion of short-term gains, it¡¯s the long-term opportunity cost of not being strategic that will make or break organizations.
To get it right, Ernst suggests leaning into a ¡°virtuous cycle¡± approach. A virtuous cycle still includes the AI-driven efficiency gains, but is followed by reinvesting those efficiency savings directly back into the workforce. It uses AI to create a 10x impact for your people and your business, rather than a small 10% gain.
If we only focus on productivity, our focus is far too narrow to capture the full breadth of value that AI has to offer.
When AI democratizes so many parts of a business, your people become your greatest differentiator. The ultimate goal isn't to replace humans with AI, but to elevate humans alongside it.
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The risks aren't limited to job loss in the name of efficiency gains. There¡¯s also the concern of ¡°brain drain,¡± meaning we offload too much of our thinking to AI and risk losing our ability to analyze, create, and adapt.
So much of what makes us grow happens over the course of moments in the flow of work, when we¡¯re challenged and have to stretch ourselves and flex new mental muscles. If AI is always solving the problem for us, we may miss out on those crucial growth opportunities.
Luckily, there¡¯s new data coming out that squashes this concern.
Danielle Li, economist and MIT Sloan professor, conducted a study on AI usage in customer service roles. Li looked at the performance of employees who use AI, including when their AI tool became unavailable, to understand whether or not the employee¡¯s capabilities faded with the tool¡¯s availability.
Li found that employees who used an AI assistant retained and continued leveraging durable skills, even when the tool wasn¡¯t available. The learnings stuck with the employees, and they applied them even without the AI tool.
The takeaway here is that the real winners in this new era will be the leaders and companies that make their people smarter, not just their systems and agents. In fact, there may be room in the future to say that AI agents are only as smart as the workforce they learn from¡ªbut that's a conversation for another time.
By now it shouldn¡¯t sound counterintuitive to hear that AI is and will continue to become a huge help in skills development. The workforces of the future are leveraging AI that doesn¡¯t just do the work for them, but teaches them how to do it in the process.
What a powerful way to accelerate learning and development for all employees, regardless of their career stage.
The workforces of the future are leveraging AI that doesn¡¯t just do the work for them, but teaches them how to do it in the process.
The Â鶹´«Ã½ ¡°Gigs¡± program is a perfect example of this in action. We¡¯re using our own AI to match employees with short-term projects that push them outside their comfort zones and into new functions that expand their skillset, visibility, and impact.
For instance, an engineer completed a gig that not only helped a different team get their project back on track, but she also learned a new programming language in the process. And the results are as impactful as the accumulated skills: employees who do gigs are 42% more likely to move into a new role internally, and their attrition rate drops by 33%.
Developing your workforce and securing their long-term commitment to the company during the process is a win-win.
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Alongside these AI benefits, we can't ignore the very real expectations organizations have for ROI and productivity gains from AI. And unfortunately for many leaders, those expectations are on the rise.
But the power struggle between productivity gains and people-centric work fundamentally underestimates AI¡¯s reliance on human intelligence. When leaders can demonstrate the value of AI for employee development, which fuels innovation, they elevate their workforce, their AI, and their ability to maximize value. This is the essence of Ernst¡¯s virtuous cycle.
Ernst likes to say, ¡°start somewhere soon¡±¡ªfind the quick wins and showcase them. Gaining buy-in to prioritize your people and your AI transformation are not mutually exclusive in the AI era, they¡¯re one and the same.
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The AI shift is about people as much as it's about technology. My favorite example of this is the .com boom. Many people envisioned computers replacing them, but now we leverage computers for efficiency. Once widely adopted and integrated, the internet fundamentally changed employee and human experiences at their cores.
To get ahead of the human adoption hurdle, Ernst¡¯s team initiated the EverydayAI program, aimed at equipping all employees with the right mindset and habits needed to successfully harness AI. The initiative began with a careful analysis to understand the unique challenges different roles face. Engineers and sales teams, for example, have very different needs and concerns when it comes to AI adoption.
Gaining buy-in to prioritize your people and your AI transformation are not mutually exclusive in the AI era, they¡¯re one and the same.
By understanding barriers to adoption, the EverydayAI program helps employees build confidence through activities like ¡°prompt-a-thons¡± and encouraging teams to set their own AI goals. In fact, every single employee must set a goal for how they¡¯d use AI in their daily work, and it¡¯s working: AI adoption at Â鶹´«Ã½ is now at 80%, and our frequent users are 13% more likely to see a clear career path with us.
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We can¡¯t expect our people to embrace AI if we're not embracing it ourselves. Leaders need to be open about not having all of the answers, and willing to get their hands dirty interacting with these new technologies.
The key is to create an environment that sparks curiosity and continuous learning, where employees have the permission and time to experiment. Instead of a top-down mandate, Ernst puts employees¡¯ stories and experiences at the center of the AI transformation. The goal isn't just to talk about AI, but to show how it can truly elevate employees and their work.
The message is quite simple: Those who only focus on short-term gains risk finding themselves with a fragmented workforce that¡¯s AI-automated with relatively flat performance over time, instead of AI-innovated with compounding gains for their workforce and bottom line.
AI is going to drive innovation in the future of work, not by replacing humans, but rather by presenting new techniques, learnings, and capabilities for humans that elevates everyone.
Creating the right environment for these elements to come together is crucial. It will set apart the innovators from the automators in the future of work. Which will you become?
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A remarkable 82% of organizations are already using AI agents. But is your team ready? Read to learn how businesses are maximizing human potential with AI, featuring insights from nearly 3,000 global leaders.
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The rapid advancement of AI has raised huge questions about its impact on jobs. Despite that, 83% of workers agree that AI will enhance human creativity rather than limit it. Learn more about the AI skills revolution in this new global Â鶹´«Ã½ study.