Play the Game That AI Can Never Beat You At

Some of the initial hype and hysteria around artificial intelligence (AI) seems to have settled down since the explosive debuts of ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other generative AI platforms. But AI is still very much a hot issue, and we still see headlines that evoke fear, especially when it comes to AI taking over functions that were previously considered safe from it, such as art, design, and writing.

Meanwhile, it’s long been clear that it will almost surely take over many tasks in the worlds of tech, business, and finance. While these discussions are important and legitimate—and I agree that AI does pose a significant risk in certain disciplines—there is one key skill set where you can gain and maintain an advantage over AI.

Of course, there’s just one problem: Far too few people actually make the effort to cultivate this crucial skill set.

Acknowledging the Part That’s True

Before I get into what those skills are, let’s first acknowledge the obvious. When it comes to technical and quantitative skills such as coding, market research, and data analysis, AI is absolutely better than humans already, and it will only continue to increase its superiority. For this reason, certain assumptions of the past, like the notion that having coding skills will automatically translate to a guaranteed job, are all but dead. This is simply the new reality. You can either resist this reality, or you can do what’s needed to make sure that AI will never be able to replace you by getting good at the skills that it can never surpass you at.

Interpersonal Says It All

Sometimes, it’s helpful to remind ourselves what certain words actually mean. The word “interpersonal” is composed of the prefix inter-, which means “between,” with the root word “person,” and finally, the suffix -al, which means “pertaining to.” So interpersonal means that which occurs “between people.”

Why is this important? It means that the realm of interpersonal communication is the area that AI cannot eclipse because, by definition, interpersonal means “between people,” and AI is not people. Highly sophisticated AI might be able to mimic certain interpersonal behaviors, but it doesn’t know what it’s doing or why, whereas human beings who are skilled at interpersonal communication know exactly what they are doing and why.

At the same time, the interpersonal realm is and will continue to be extremely important, particularly in terms of what this post is about: power and influence. The whole point is to show why power and influence are important and the role that interpersonal skills play in boosting your power and influence.

Which Interpersonal Skills?

Granted, even though interpersonal means “between people,” there are certain areas in which AI has already taken over jobs that once demanded interpersonal skills. An example is online customer service, where you may have already noticed how some retailers have shifted to AI-based customer service via chatbots. On the surface, it certainly looks like these chatbots are able to crudely mimic some rudimentary interpersonal behavior, such as saying hello, apologizing when a customer complains, and providing some basic services if the customers’ inquiries are straightforward. But this is still a far cry from more complex and nuanced situations, of which there are many, that require the skill of emotional intelligence (EQ), which, as of yet, remains the domain of socially astute people.

Other soft skills that remain the exclusive domain of people are active listening, critical thinking, flexibility/adaptability, knowing when to use which principles of persuasion in which situations, and the so-called “sources of power” identified by social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven such as referent power and network power.

Could AI conceivably ever get as good as humans at some of these soft skills, if not all of them? It’s certainly possible, at least theoretically, but it’s not likely to happen in the near-term future. And even if the technology gets there, there would still be issues of human psychology that complicate matters. For example, current research shows that many people don’t trust AI, and even when they do trust it is often in situations when they should not trust it. There is also the AI equivalent of the Dunning-Kruger effect because an AI system lacks the self-awareness to understand its own limitations. If the human user isn’t aware of this either and overly relies on the AI, that could lead to serious problems. But in this hypothetical situation, neither the AI nor the human user has the soft skills to recognize the problem. In contrast, a human colleague who is perceptive and detail-oriented (which are also soft skills) could recognize it and intervene before a problem occurs.

Artificial Intelligence Essential Reads

How Leaders Can Use AI to Bring Business Objectives to Life

The Large Language Laboratory: AI as Scientist and Subject

Employers Want Workers With Good Interpersonal Skills

Obviously, just because soft skills and interpersonal skills remain the domain of people doesn’t mean that all people are good at it—far from it. In fact, despite the fact that interpersonal skills such as EQ are what many employers increasingly seek in prospective employees, they are also the skills they say are the hardest to find. This isn’t surprising. After all, enrollment rates for programs in technical fields such as IT and computer science have shot up in recent years, while those for the liberal arts and humanities have been declining. As a culture and society, we have clearly been prioritizing technical skills, particularly in recent years with the growth of the tech sector.

Changing times demand flexibility and adaptation, and we are living in rapidly changing times. But flexibility and adaptiveness are also soft skills and, as mentioned, those are in short supply. So many people will fail to adapt. What this means is that there may be a potentially brutal process of even highly capable people getting left behind if they try to compete with AI at the technical level. It also means that those who cultivate interpersonal skills will be all the more valued in the workplace of the future. And since high-level interpersonal skills are in short supply, being skilled at what both AI and many other people are not skilled at—well, what’s a better form of job security than that

A quote from the Columbia University president Minouche Shafi sums it up pretty well: “In the past, jobs were about muscles. Now they’re about brains, but in the future, they’ll be about the heart.”

It’s a great quote, though I would say that the jobs of the future will involve the brain and heart working together. Robots are already better at many tasks requiring muscles, and AI is already better at many tasks requiring brains. But it’s the skills that require both heart and brain—i.e., interpersonal skills—where AI cannot compete.