How Can You Future-Proof Your Business Using the 7 AI Symbiosis Principles?

What Are the 3 Unique Human Skills That AI Can Never Replicate?

Are you worried that AI will make your skills obsolete? Pascal Bornet’s Irreplaceable offers a roadmap to survival. Learn why “Humics” like genuine creativity and social authenticity are your best defense, and discover the 5 mindset shifts required to build a “change-ready” organization that thrives alongside machines.

Stop competing with algorithms and start leveraging your humanity. Read the full summary to understand the complete “AI-Ready” framework and apply the specific strategies that will transition you from a worried employee into an irreplaceable leader.

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As artificial intelligence grows ubiquitous across sectors, many people are rightfully worried about losing their jobs. But, rather than wait helplessly for a future of financial ruin, remember that you have agency, writes AI and automation expert Pascal Bornet. Start taking steps to protect your career and gain vital insights that will help you transform your business and thrive in the Age of AI. Learn how you can become an irreplaceable leader by embracing “compassion, wisdom, and ethics,” while making adaptability a core capacity of your business.

Take-Aways

• Avoid AI-related obsolescence by becoming more adaptive and flexible.
• Become a “change-ready” organization that seizes future opportunities.
• Drive innovation by cultivating positive human abilities that machines can’t replicate.
• Adopt five key principles to ensure your business is “AI-ready.”
• Protect humanity from AI’s potential harms and take responsibility for the ethical use of AI.
• Embrace seven “symbiosis principles” to support useful human–AI collaborations.
• Overcome human and machine bias with a strong ethical framework.
• Become an “AI-ready” business by shifting your mindset in five ways.

Summary

Avoid AI-related obsolescence by becoming more adaptive and flexible.

While you may be focused on how to avoid losing your job as AI’s sophistication evolves, you’d be better served by becoming more adaptive and resilient, and developing skills you could leverage in different job roles. Resist the temptation to frame AI in binary terms, as either “good” or “bad.” Much of AI’s impact on your life hinges on the relationship you develop with it, its programming, and the quality of its data. It’s time to stop thinking of AI as being in competition with humans and frame it instead as a valued collaborator.

“Don’t try to save your job; this fight is already lost.”

Many falsely believe that artificial and human intelligence are essentially the same, but this is not the case. AI merely simulates human intelligence. It lacks any true understanding of the subject matter at hand. While AI can appear genuinely creative, its output is more akin to a “magician’s trick” as it generates content using its programming and predictive algorithms For example, when ChatGPT is tasked to write a poem, it does so using a process called “recombination,” in which it combines phrases and lines of poetry it finds in its datasets. Meanwhile, human writing is usually intentional in nature. It is rooted in the author’s sensory and emotional experiences, ideals, background, and reasoning. Aspire to leverage your uniquely human skills, such as empathy and creativity, making yourself irreplaceable in an AI-powered world.

Become a “change-ready” organization that seizes future opportunities.

There are several risks humanity could face if the majority of people fail to leverage their human strengths and collaborate effectively with AI:

• Companies could use AI algorithms in ways that strip humans of agency, such as using AI to assign and shape job roles.
• People could stop making decisions for themselves, relying instead on AI assistants that use data analytics to determine everything ranging from what they should eat to whom they should date.
• Institutions could use AI to harvest user data to “rank” people, to the detriment or benefit of their social status.

“In a world where AI can do almost anything, the greatest value lies in being uniquely human.”

To mitigate the risks and harms of AI, your organization should develop an “AI-ready” critical competency, which refers to harnessing the potential of AI to boost human performance, while putting ethical safeguards in place. It’s also vital that you develop a “human-ready” competency, which refers to the creation of a synergistic relationship with AI, combining AI and human strengths. The ability to love, for example, and to tell personal stories from experience, are essential human strengths that will be needed in the future. Organizations must also be “change-ready,” which refers to developing the “resilience and adaptability” needed to stay competitive and drive innovation in an era of rapid change and uncertainty. For example, Toyota’s recent investment in hydrogen fuel cell technology demonstrates change-ready behavior: There isn’t yet a broad market for these fuel cells, but Toyota sensed a future opportunity in a market that is seeking alternative energy options.

Drive innovation by cultivating positive human abilities that machines can’t replicate.

Become irreplaceable by cultivating the following “unique human abilities” or “Humics”:

1. “Genuine creativity” — You don’t need to teach children to be creative; when they play, they naturally engage in acts of imaginative creation. Genuine creativity is essential for finding innovative solutions and creating meaningful art.
2. “Critical thinking” — When people take time to analyze problems, reflect on options and opportunities, and engage their curiosity, they become driving forces for change. Critical thinking gives people the capacity to make ethical decisions from a place of deep understanding.
3. “Social authenticity” — When people interact with one another and share experiences, they often display genuine empathy — unlike machines — and develop a shared understanding. Authentic social connection enables humans to drive collaboration and build communities.

Adopt five key principles to ensure your business is “AI-ready.”

Transform your business into an AI-ready organization by embracing an “AI mindset,” which requires embracing the following principles:

1. “Efficiency over effort” — Don’t push people to work harder and longer. Find ways for them to work smarter instead, using the time-saving benefits of AI to create space for more impactful human activities.
2. “Value over volume” — It’s become relatively easy to mass-produce goods in large quantities inexpensively using AI tools. Stand out from your competition by focusing on creating higher-value goods and services.
3. “Collaboration over control” — Don’t be afraid to surrender control sometimes, automating simple decision-making tasks, for example.
4. “Balance over burnout” — It’s time to stop glamorizing hustle culture and overworking. Take advantage of the fact that AI can perform some of your work for you, leaving you with free time to engage in self-care activities.
5. “Reflection over rush” — Rather than use AI in a frenzied, reckless manner (for example, blasting clients with thousands of unsolicited emails), aspire to take a more thoughtful, ethical, and intentional approach.

Protect humanity from AI’s potential harms and take responsibility for the ethical use of AI.

People — especially children — are vulnerable to digital addiction. Companies may intentionally design AI tools to be addictive, ensuring people will keep using their products. For example, AI enables companies to create immersive metaverse experiences and simulated realities that trigger feelings of intense pleasure in gamers’ brains, resulting in addictions. Research from Statista indicates that nearly half of people view addiction as the greatest risk of the metaverse. To protect children from technology addictions as AI grows in sophistication, inform them of the risks and create boundaries — such as no phones at the table during meals. Model a healthy relationship with your tech devices yourself and introduce hobbies that don’t involve phones, such as playing music or crafting. Seek out mental health professionals if needed.

“To be truly irreplaceable, companies must develop AI that is explainable, fair, and respectful of people’s privacy.”

The data industry accounts for roughly $227 billion each year. Your data moves invisibly across multiple platforms, which aggregate and sell it each day. Some of your data, ranging from your banking details to your geolocation, is sensitive, leaving you vulnerable to data breaches and trust abuses. Embrace an ethos of transparency when using people’s data, while rejecting AI tools that invade users’ privacy. Put robust data protection measures in place, such as encrypting your users’ data. As AI develops, it reflects the data users generate. Thus, developers must act like “parents raising a child” by creating programs and choosing datasets that highlight the best of humanity.

Embrace seven “symbiosis principles” to support useful human–AI collaborations.

Humans should develop symbiotic collaborations with AI, rooted in the following principles:

1. “Complementary capabilities” — Combine AI’s strengths, such as its massive computational power and data processing capabilities, with human strengths, such as emotional intelligence.
2. Understanding — Create space for human oversight by prioritizing AI literacy: helping people develop an understanding of AI’s strengths and limitations.
3. Alignment — Humans and intelligent machines should work together toward goals and values that benefit all stakeholders. For example, rather than using AI tools to cut costs and lay off workers, which could diminish your customer experience, consider using AI to improve your customer experience. If, for example, you support workers with AI tools that complete more routine, monotonous tasks, you free human workers to spend more time with customers.
4. “Interdependence without overdependence” — In nature, symbiotic organisms work together interdependently — such as honey bees and the flowers they pollinate — without being overly dependent on one another (flowers, for example, don’t rely solely on bees for pollination). Likewise, humans should collaborate with intelligent machines without becoming so dependent on them that they lose the ability to exercise human judgment or leverage human strengths.
5. Flexibility and adaptability — Embrace an ethos of continuous learning, as you develop new skills and strategies to better collaborate with AI tools as they evolve.
6. Leveraging AI’s strengths — Don’t try to compete with AI when it comes to speed and scalability. Instead, leverage AI’s potential to assist you in tasks, ranging from code generation to calculation.
7. “The Unreplicable Human Essence Principle” — Your emotions, personality and life experiences are uniquely human and unique to you. AI is unable to authentically replicate your human capabilities, such as ethics and empathy.

Overcome human and machine bias with a strong ethical framework.

Both humans and machines are capable of bias, which can result in the unfair treatment of certain groups. For example, according to ProPublica research, due to systemic bias, the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS) software is 77% more likely to predict Black criminal defendants will go on to commit a violent crime and 45% more likely to say a Black defendant will commit some kind of crime in the future than a white defendant with a similar criminal history. There are several steps you can take to prevent bias in AI tools: Use fair and representative data to train your models; develop and test AI models rigorously before deploying them; and create a feedback loop, enabling users to give you actionable critiques of your product or service.

On a human level, aspire to strengthen your critical thinking capacity and develop an awareness of your own cognitive biases, which can range from overconfidence to confirmation bias. Work to expand your self-awareness, reflecting on your values, biases, and motivations. Make sure that the decisions you make align with your core values.

“Being responsible with AI helps in building and maintaining trust with customers, employees, and other stakeholders.”

It’s not always easy to eliminate bias, as AI algorithms can seem as though they’re operating in a “black box.” For example, HireVue, a company providing businesses with AI-powered hiring support, has helped employers predict whether someone will be a good fit for a job using data drawn from candidates’ word choices and facial expressions. Critics have pointed out that this approach means HireVue could disproportionately favor people from certain cultural backgrounds: Facial expressions, for example, often vary from culture to culture. In response to these claims, HireVue has stopped using facial analysis entirely.

Become an “AI-ready” business by shifting your mindset in five ways.

Work toward an “AI business mindset” in the following ways:

1. Leadership takes initiative — Leaders must model change, taking part in AI initiatives at your company and aligning them to strategic goals. For example, John Deere’s leaders regularly host town hall meetings in which they discuss their AI strategy and overall objectives.
2. People first — Prioritize people’s needs as you adopt new technologies, with user solutions such as “no-code” applications.
3. “Cross-functional data collaboration” — If your organization is siloed, work to overcome division, creating opportunities for collaboration. Make sure everyone speaks the same “data language,” by using a data dictionary.
4. Adopt a product mindset — Don’t jump from one AI project to the next. Instead, develop and adapt solutions as needed in response to user feedback, evolutions in the market, and new innovations.
5. “Synergizing technologies” — Merge AI with other technologies, such as digital workflows and machine learning (ML), to unleash its full potential.

About the Author

Pascal Bornet is a keynote speaker on automation and artificial intelligence (AI). He is a former senior executive at McKinsey, as well as an award-winning global AI and automation expert with more than a million followers on social media.