The "Contradiction" of Valuing Soft Skills in a World of AI
Caitlin McClelland Methvin
Bilingual Word Nerd and Educator Extraordinaire
From the Blog, Translating Teaching: How Former Educators Make Great Employees
In our messy world, contradictions are to be expected, but that doesn’t mean we have to like them, especially when they insinuate that your profession isn’t valuable. With the invention of AI capable of regenerating new responses based on patterns it has observed (e.g. ChatGPT) some futurists are predicting the demise of specialized service jobs like teachers, professors, sociologists, and psychologists.
At the same time, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report cites creative thinking, analytical thinking and curiosity and life-long learning as the first, second, and fourth top employment skills on the rise. Likewise, Forbes lists critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and creativity as the top third, fourth, and fifth of most in-demand skills for the next 10 years.
Following this logic, it appears that a way to ensure your employability is to have irreplaceable soft skills, to know how to be a more profitable human than AI. So, why are there so many articles predicting that specialized service jobs - whose core is built on many of these very abilities - are in danger of being replaced by AI?
If we are really interested in candidates that know how to think critically and can communicate effectively with other humans by employing emotional intelligence, in theory, we should value these skills. And yet, when it comes to predicting a job’s permeability, many seem to think that the jobs known for these traits will be replaceable. While there is some variation among the professions deemed to die out (also on the chopping block: accountants, geographers, truck transportation) almost all include a majority of specialized service jobs, despite the fact that most of the so-called doomed jobs are based on coveted skills. Coincidentally, these listicles never seem to project their own replacement, despite the fact that some platforms have already been accused of using AI to write predictable content.
A Robot Could never Replace ME.
A simple explanation for this contradiction appears to be rooted in human nature. We want to consider ourselves as irreplaceable, needed. However, the underlying core of this logic is circular. I could never be replaced by artificial intelligence because I am human. Being a human, I am capable of work that AI is not. While not declaring our preferences for ourselves outright, it exists just below the surface of discussions of desirable soft skills, the same skills that make up what it means to an educator, a psychologist, a sociologist.
My point is not to agree or disagree with this prediction (although I do find it incredibly unlikely you will ever get seven-year-olds to learn from an app) but rather to point out the contradictory nature of these claims. On the one hand, the specialized service industry appears to be doomed, but on the other, these jobs are based on what we claim to value the most in workers and still generally agreed upon to be impossible for a programmed entity. You cannot empathize with a human being if you are not human. Problem-solving often requires a deep understanding of the problem at hand. And I think we have seen enough examples of AI’s “critical thinking” to be skeptical of any decisions they will make. So, if the efficiency of the specialized service industry is based on our humanity, why are we so quick to predict its demise to AI?
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Why the Contradiction?
On the one hand, we will always see ourselves as better than AI because we don’t want, or can’t, imagine otherwise. Also, there is a historical precedence of valuing the organic over artificial. Almost every wave of new technology has resulted in a Luddite backlash, a moral panic associated with the ontological debate over what it is to be human. And if you aren’t convinced by our history, just check out every dystopian film that features artificial intelligence (Blade Runner, The Matrix, M3GAN, etc.). We want to see ourselves as better than programmed intelligence. And yet, here we are again, going through the same crisis in which some profess the end of professions, while others reject such claims as blasphemy.
Maybe, it’s because our inability to admit the superiority of artificial intelligence is not truly a contradiction.
Futurists aren’t predicting that all jobs will be replaced by AI; it’s only certain jobs, which are generally populated by certain populations. It is not a matter of “them” vs. “us” in the sense of humanity versus artificial intelligence. Rather, many of us are using this trope of fearing the impact of new technologies as simple another way to differentiate between “us humans” versus “those humans” and “them, artificial intelligence.” Given our propensity for using skin tone, religion, and sexual orientation as means to elevate our status as “better than,” it makes sense we would use this new difference (whether you can be replaced by AI or not) as just another excuse to divide ourselves. We can’t imagine a world in which our unique talents and skills could be replaced; and yet, somehow, it’s all too easy to imagine the skills and talents of others being replaced by a bot.
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