The CEO of a cloud company believes AI may take over routine knowledge jobs, but roles requiring judgment and specialized expertise remain essential skills that organizations cannot do without.
Aaron Levie, CEO of the cloud technology company Box, commented on how artificial intelligence is changing the future of work and the extent to which this technology threatens jobs. Levie sees that when AI is introduced into the workplace, it typically handles the initial 80 percent, which consists of repetitive or labor-intensive tasks.
Meanwhile, the remaining 20 percent is human territory, encompassing specialized expertise, judgment, and relationship-building—qualities that make humans irreplaceable personnel. AI serves only as a tool that frees us to fully create value in these areas.
To illustrate more broadly and deeply, consider the work of lawyers: each week, junior lawyers spend most of their time reading Supreme Court rulings, identifying case connections, and summarizing legal points. This represents the 80 percent of work that is lengthy, tedious, and teachable to machines for repetition.
However, no client hires a lawyer just to summarize documents. They expect persuasive litigation, convincing judges, or rescuing failing business deals—these are the 20 percent of tasks only humans can perform.
Similarly, cybersecurity engineers may rely on AI to detect abnormal patterns during real-time system attacks, but engineers must make decisions under pressure and with incomplete information to solve problems on the spot. This expertise and judgment cannot be derived from raw data alone.
This phenomenon is similar to the era when calculators were introduced. They did not reduce the demand for mathematicians but instead relieved them of repetitive calculations, allowing them to focus on developing advanced equations. AI is doing the same for knowledge work, but across all fields simultaneously.
Therefore, the key is to stop competing with machines on speed and instead focus on developing judgment, forming well-founded opinions from direct experience, and building client trust—assets that do not exist in digital form. These experiences will help workers survive in the AI era.
Source:FastCompany