AI Raises the Premium on Being Human
by Claire L. Brady, EdD
I recently read a Workplace Intelligence piece featuring workforce experts discussing the future of work and AI. They represented different industries, different perspectives, and different areas of expertise. Yet despite their varied backgrounds, they kept returning to the same conclusion.
The skills becoming more valuable in the age of AI aren't primarily technical.
They're human.
Judgment. Adaptability. Creativity. Communication. Empathy. Leadership. The ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn. The ability to make sense of ambiguity. The ability to build trust. The ability to work effectively with both technology and people.
As someone who spends much of her time talking with higher education leaders about AI, I found that observation both encouraging and important.
What if AI isn’t the Disruptor we Anticipated?
For the past few years, much of the conversation about AI has focused on disruption. What jobs will change? What tasks will be automated? Which skills will become obsolete? These are reasonable questions, but they can sometimes distract us from a larger reality: AI is not simply changing what we do. It is changing what becomes most valuable.
And increasingly, what becomes most valuable is what makes us human.
Several of the experts noted that organizations are making a critical mistake. They are treating AI as a technology implementation challenge when it is actually a human transformation challenge- and boy, did I feel “seen”! They are investing heavily in tools, infrastructure, and systems while often underinvesting in the people who will ultimately determine whether those tools create value.
That observation should resonate deeply with higher education.
For generations, colleges and universities have helped students develop far more than technical expertise. We teach students how to think critically, communicate effectively, solve complex problems, collaborate with diverse groups of people, navigate uncertainty, and make informed decisions. These outcomes have sometimes been dismissed as "soft skills," a phrase I have never particularly liked because there is nothing soft about them.
In fact, they may be among the hardest skills to develop—and the most valuable.
As AI becomes increasingly capable of generating content, summarizing information, analyzing data, and automating routine tasks, the differentiating factor will not be access to information. It will be the ability to interpret it wisely. It will not be the ability to generate an answer. It will be the ability to ask a better question.
That is a distinctly human capability.
Implications for Higher Education Leaders
First, we need to stop treating AI literacy as primarily a technical skill. AI literacy certainly includes understanding tools and platforms, but it also requires critical thinking, ethical decision-making, information evaluation, and judgment. Students need to learn not only how to use AI, but when to question it, challenge it, verify it, and choose not to use it. The most AI-literate graduate may not be the one who knows the most tools. It may be the one who knows when human judgment matters most.
Second, this is an opportunity to reinvest in the human capabilities we already claim to value. For years, colleges and universities have highlighted communication, leadership, teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, and adaptability as essential learning outcomes. As AI becomes more capable, these outcomes become even more important. If AI can help generate a report, summarize research, or create a first draft, the value increasingly comes from interpretation, collaboration, creativity, and decision-making. Those aren't secondary outcomes anymore. They are strategic advantages.
Third, institutions should model effective human-AI partnership across campus. Students learn as much from institutional culture as they do from coursework. How are leaders using AI? How are faculty integrating it into teaching and scholarship? How are staff leveraging it to improve service and efficiency? If we want students to see AI as a tool that augments human capability rather than replaces it, we need to demonstrate that ourselves.
Fourth, we should create more opportunities for students to wrestle with ambiguity, not fewer. One of the great ironies of AI is that as answers become easier to generate, questions become more valuable. Higher education should continue creating experiences that require students to navigate complexity, evaluate competing perspectives, exercise judgment, and engage in meaningful dialogue. Information is increasingly abundant. Wisdom remains scarce.
Finally, we need to think carefully about what we measure. If employers are increasingly seeking adaptability, communication, creativity, judgment, and leadership, how do we know our students are developing those capabilities? We have spent decades measuring content mastery. The AI era may require us to become equally intentional about assessing the human capabilities that technology cannot easily replicate.
Closing Thoughts
The future belongs to people who know how to work effectively with both AI and other human beings. That's not a rejection of technology. It's an acknowledgment that technology alone is not enough.
These workforce experts weren't arguing that AI doesn't matter. Quite the opposite. AI will continue to reshape work, careers, and organizations in profound ways. But their message was remarkably consistent: the individuals and organizations that thrive will be those that combine technological fluency with deeply human capabilities.
For years, higher ed leaders have been asked to articulate the value of a college education in a rapidly changing world. Ironically, one of the most compelling answers may be emerging from the very technology many feared would diminish that value.
AI is not reducing the importance of human skills. It is raising the premium on them. And that is a future higher education is uniquely positioned to help shape.
Note: this image was created using ChatGPT
