The Human Edge in the AI Race

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs survey finds that the most in-demand skills this decade are human attributes that complement, rather than compete with, machines: resilience, leadership and creativity. Even AI researchers emphasise that emotional intelligence, creativity and people management remain stubbornly hard to automate.

The Skills to Power AI

Michael Fenlon, former executive director of Harvard Online at the university’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, uses the term “power skills” to capture “all the things that AI on its own can’t do”. Long devalued as “soft skills”, these competencies are the operating system that allows technical expertise and AI tools to run at scale.

Power skills include the ability to listen deeply, synthesise conflicting perspectives, challenge colleagues constructively, demonstrate self-awareness of one’s own blind spots, and build trust in teams. Organizational research links such capabilities to higher team performance and innovation. From years advising Fortune 500 leadership on workforce strategy through his previous role as chief people and chief future of work officer at the consultancy PwC, Mr Fenlon observes: “Nobody in an organisation is paid to be average. Building these power skills is essential and enables a greater return on investment than pure technical skill training.”

AI as Force Multiplier

In a world in which 39% of workers’ skills are expected to change by 2030, organisations and individuals are scrambling to stay current and secure their futures. The more durable edge lies in cultivating both technical and human skills.

Dustin Tingley, interim vice provost for advances in learning at Harvard University, argues that: “It’s the AI in tandem with these power skills that is the linchpin to the hopes and aspirations of doubling or tripling the global economic output.” AI, he adds, is “a machine to produce abundant potential”, from analyses and forecasts to entire websites or even candidate drug molecules. But that potential presupposes that organisations should pursue every possibility the technology offers. “That is a fool’s errand,” says Mr Tingley, also a professor of government and public policy, whose work spans data science, international relations and digital education. Companies still have to decide which problems matter, which risks are acceptable and where to allocate scarce capital and attention.

"It's the AI in tandem with these power skills that is the linchpin to the hopes and aspirations of doubling or tripling the global economic output."—Dustin Tingley, Interim Vice Provost for Advances in Learning

Tingley highlights three such skills that will define careers in AI-intensive workplaces:

• Prioritization: humans still have to make decisions about priorities and trade-offs, requiring reflection and critical thinking to decide where AI is worth the cost and complexity.
• Creativity: “The creative use of AI,” he says, “is about orchestrating creatively how agents work together. Kind of like what a conductor does in an orchestra.”
• Communication: turning rich, AI-generated analysis into concise, persuasive stories for non-technical audiences. AI can help to generate ideas—but if you can’t communicate it, the idea “never leaves the chat”.

Professional Development at Scale

Many organisations today respond to this challenge by sending employees to short, technical AI tutorials, hoping that the skills they gain from these will somehow diffuse into the business. Those efforts often sharpen tool use, but leave gaps in leadership, teamwork and ethics.

For organisations seeking an edge, the question is not whether to invest in AI and power skills, but how. Harvard Online’s programs are designed to drive impact for individuals, teams and organisations via curated digital certificate pathways that blend AI fluency with leadership, ethics, decision-making and communication. They bring faculty from across Harvard University—spanning computer science, business, public policy, law, health care and the humanities—into action-oriented, high-impact, case-focused learning experiences.

Rather than treating human and technical skills as separate tracks, Harvard Online builds them into the same syllabus. Power Skills for Career Growth, for example, packages short courses on resilience, communication, influence and tech ethics to help professionals to navigate AI-enabled workplaces. The tiered Make Better Decisions program gives leaders and teams a shared language and toolkit for tackling bias and judgment under uncertainty. In more specialised contexts, courses such as Data Science and AI Principles help learners to apply basic concepts of data science to modern business challenges from business to government, advertising to health care—all through a no-code and no-maths lens.

These courses are designed and taught by faculty who offer research-based insights with an emphasis on application in the real world. Rather than selling a particular technology stack, they are bringing insights to life through rich case studies from global organisations and years of experience of teaching the next generation of leaders.

In the race to harness AI, it is tempting to focus on machines. The firms that pull ahead, however, are likely to be those that invest as heavily in the people who use them.