Directed Self Placement

Section III. Sample Assignment Review

Please read, When Your Technical Skills Are Eclipsed, Your HumanityWill Matter More Than Ever by Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn. Thisarticle and the assignment below is typical of early work assigned inENG 101.

When Your Technical Skills Are Eclipsed, Your Humanity Will Matter More Than Ever

Feb. 14, 2024

By Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn

Mr. Raman is a work force expert at LinkedIn. Ms. Flynn is the president of Jobs for the Future.

There have been just a handful of moments over the centuries when wehave experienced a huge shift in the skills our economy values most. Weare entering one such moment now. Technical and data skills that havebeen highly sought after for decades appear to be among the most exposedto advances in artificial intelligence. But other skills, particularlythe people skills that we have long undervalued as soft, will verylikely remain the most durable. That is a hopeful sign that A.I. couldusher in a world of work that is anchored more, not less, around humanability.

A moment like this compels us to think differently about how we aretraining our workers, especially the heavy premium we have placed onskills like coding and data analysis that continue to reshape the fieldsof higher education and worker training. The early signals of what A.I.can do should compel us to think differently about ourselves as aspecies. Our abilities to effectively communicate, develop empathy andthink critically have allowed humans to collaborate, innovate and adaptfor millenniums. Those skills are ones we all possess and can improve,yet they have never been properly valued in our economy or prioritizedin our education and training. That needs to change.

In today’s knowledge economy, many students are focused on gainingtechnical skills because those skills are seen as the most competitivewhen it comes to getting a good job. And for good reason. For decades,we have viewed those jobs as future-proof, given the growth oftechnology companies and the fact that engineering majors land thehighest-paying jobs.

The number of students seeking four-year degrees in computer scienceand information technology shot up 41 percent between the spring of 2018and the spring of 2023, while the number of humanities majorsplummeted. Workers who didn’t go to college and those who neededadditional skills and wanted to take advantage of a lucrative job boomflocked to dozens of coding boot camps and online technical programs.

Now comes the realization of the power of generative A.I., with itsvast capabilities in skills like writing, programming and translation.(Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is a major investor in the technology.)LinkedIn researchers recently looked at which skills any given jobrequires and then identified over 500 likely to be affected bygenerative A.I. technologies. They then estimated that 96 percent of asoftware engineer’s current skills mainly proficiency in programminglanguages can eventually be replicated by A.I. Skills associated withjobs like legal associates and finance officers will also be highlyexposed.

In fact, given the broad impact A.I. is set to have, it is quite likely to affect all of our work to some degree or another.

We believe there will be engineers in the future, but they will mostlikely spend less time coding and more time on tasks like collaborationand communication. We also believe that there will be new categories ofjobs that emerge as a result of A.I.’s capabilities just like we’veseen in past moments of technological advancement and that those jobswill probably be anchored increasingly around people skills.

Circling around this research is the big question emerging across somany conversations about A.I. and work, namely: What are our corecapabilities as humans?

If we answer that question from a place of fear about what’s leftfor people in the age of A.I., we can end up conceding a diminished viewof human capability. Instead, it’s critical for us all to start from aplace that imagines what’s possible for humans in the age of A.I. Whenyou do that, you find yourself focusing quickly on people skills thatallow us to collaborate and innovate in ways technology can amplify butnever replace. And you find yourself whatever the role or career stageyou’re in with agency to better manage this moment of historic change.

Communication is already the most in-demand skill across jobs onLinkedIn today. Even experts in A.I. are observing that the skills weneed to work well with A.I. systems, such as prompting, are similar tothe skills we need to communicate and reason effectively with otherpeople.

Over 70 percent of executives surveyed by LinkedIn last year saidsoft skills were more important to their organizations than highlytechnical A.I. skills. And a recent Jobs for the Future survey foundthat 78 percent of the 10 top-employing occupations classified uniquelyhuman skills and tasks as "important" or "very important". Theseare skills like building interpersonal relationships, negotiatingbetween parties and guiding and motivating teams.

Now is the time for leaders, across sectors, to develop new ways forstudents to learn that are more directly, and more dynamically, tied towhere our economy is going, not where it has been. Critically, thatinvolves bringing the same level of rigor to training around peopleskills that we have brought to technical skills. Colleges anduniversities have a critical role to play. Over the past few decades, wehave seen a prioritization of science and engineering, often at theexpense of the humanities. That calibration will need to be reconsidered.

Those not pursuing a four-year degree should look for those trainingproviders that have long emphasized people skills and are invested insocial capital development.

Employers will need to be educators not just around A.I. tools butalso on people skills and people-to-people collaboration. Majoremployers like Walmart and American Airlines are already exploring waysto put A.I. in the hands of employees so they can spend less time onroutine tasks and more time on personal engagement with customers.

Ultimately, for our society, this comes down to whether we believe inthe potential of humans with as much conviction as we believe in thepotential of A.I. If we do, it is entirely possible to build a world ofwork that not only is more human but also is a place where all peopleare valued for the unique skills they have, enabling us to deliver newlevels of human achievement across so many areas that affect all of ourlives, from health care to transportation to education. Along the way,we could meaningfully increase equity in our economy, in part byaddressing the persistent gender gap that exists when we under valueskills that women bring to work at a higher percentage than men.

Almost anticipating this moment a few years ago, Minouche Shafik, whois now the president of Columbia University, said: "In the past, jobswere about muscles. Now they’re about brains, but in the future,they’ll be about the heart."

The knowledge economy that we have lived in for decades emerged outof a goods economy that we lived in for millenniums, fueled byagriculture and manufacturing. Today the knowledge economy is giving wayto a relationship economy, in which people skills and social abilitiesare going to become even more core to success than ever before. Thatpossibility is not just cause for new thinking when it comes to workforce training. It is also cause for greater imagination when it comesto what is possible for us as humans not simply as individuals andorganizations but as a species.