We live in a hyper-inflating knowledge economy, and everything we think we knew about jobs and college is eroding. So what do we do? This post lays out a path forward for an AI future...
The answer emerging from successful AI adoptions: we shift from "I am what I know" to "I am how I connect, judge, and create meaning from what machines know."
I've often told high school and college classes that their imagination is the currency of their lives and that human connection is the bank. I know, it sounds esoteric, but it isn't.
Loved this. I might add one more skill. The ability to deeply understand the user/stakeholder problem and build toward that versus what you (the engineer, manager, etc.) want the problem to be. We too easily hone in on proxy problems to solve, rather than spend the time to truly understand the underlying user need.
This is the essence of agile: build what people want, so reduce waste. But there's more, the stakeholder often has a bias beyond the product. e.g. their bonus payments based on non-relevant targets (well, not relevant to delivery). So much delivery we see is tactical, not strategic, mainly because of weak senior teams, but also IT turnover of staff 12-18 months, means that strategic is rarely prioritised on the ground. Most people just want to get paid, look after their families, etc. People call me out for saying this, but I have owned companies and do now, and it is obvious. This aligns with Nate's perspective on goal setting. If every AI system delivered had an underlying corporate conscience, linked to the company's goals, strategy, mission, and values, the outputs would be quite different. So heres a update on your idea. Become skilled at defining precisely what the user needs whilst ensuring it is aligned to the strategy and direction of the company.
Grounded awareness in the here-and-now. The ability to remain centered amid distraction and uncertainty. When AI pulls us into abstraction, presence reconnects us to intuition, embodiment, and genuine human connection.
Context Sensitivity:
Seeing the layers beneath surface-level data. AI generalizes from patterns—humans thrive when they recognize exceptions, nuance, and invisible context. Understanding the hidden story behind apparent facts is increasingly valuable.
Narrative Resonance:
Crafting stories that unify data, purpose, and vision into meaningful journeys. Machines produce endless content but lack authentic resonance. Humans build trust, alignment, and inspiration through narratives that move others deeply.
Relational Intelligence:
Navigating human complexity skillfully. AI excels at transactional interactions but struggles with subtleties of emotion, motive, and trust. Relational intelligence—empathy, attunement, emotional literacy—is indispensable currency.
Courageous Authenticity:
The willingness to express truth even when uncomfortable, risky, or unconventional. AI incentivizes conformity and safety. Authenticity is valuable precisely because it cannot be algorithmically optimized—it emerges from genuine vulnerability and courage.
Embodied Discernment:
Decision-making guided by somatic intuition rather than data alone. The body registers subtleties the mind overlooks. In a hyper-rational, data-driven world, embodied wisdom anchors clear, confident judgment.
AI can make a huge difference anytime we're dealing with tame/solvable problems, like picking the optimal route for a courier or comparing an X-ray scan with a million others. It cannot (yet) do much when we're dealing with wicked/unsolvable problems, like what is a humanistic way to algorithmically manage a gig work platform or does it still make sense to keep treating a dying patient?
AI takes away the complicated problems and leaves to us the complex ones. It tackles all information and knowledge but it leaves us the wisdom. If we care to have any.
I mainly use ChatGPT and cursor. I’d like to see them generalize all of the input that I’ve ever given them so we are evolving on the relationship and the knowledge base that we have created with each other instead of me having to keep referencing specifics. It would help with flow / the ability to forward think / come to the conclusion or the next pitfall together / light up blind spots.
Amber, I'm working hard on a system that will actively 'remember' all your conversations and create an 'enduring' picture of you. I'd love to talk more about your experience and what's you're looking for. ken@8thfold.com
If you watch TV weather forecasters these days, they are always talking about how they believe one model is more correct than the other on a particular forecast. Which model that is changes from day to day. At least that's a familiar-to-me example.
Very good article, but I can't identify with anything. I'm starting college for the first time at 48 (pedagogy) with the goal of getting a teaching position and earning a steady salary. The reason is that I've never been successful in making a living online with my writing and service in Jungian psychology and astrology, knowledge I acquired self-taught over the course of eight years. The content is free. A degree is my last hope. I live in Mexico, in a small, industrial city where the economy revolves around renting rooms and selling food to students. The only way to get ahead is a credential to be a bureaucratic teacher.
I've tried every possible way to generate content that either aligns with what the audience seems to want or completely deviates from it, something more genuinely mine. I've been unsuccessful. I've tried creating a YouTube channel, but AI assistants that produce professional videos come at a price; anything worthwhile to generate content comes at a price. But if you produce high-quality information, even through an article without audiovisual production, no one wants to pay for it.
To live while I use my salary to pay for my studies, I depend on selling astrological readings or donations. I'm screwed all around. I can't get any clients, and no one donates anything or subscribes to my blog. A degree is my last hope.
Hi Norsan, thanks for sharing your story. I can feel how frustrating it's been trying to make your knowledge pay off. I definitely respect your decision to go back to college - that takes guts. While my piece went a different direction, I'm genuinely rooting for you to find the stability you're looking for!
This is gold! Thank you for posting this. I have been writing for parents, to help them make sense of the world, and then guide their kids. Your approach and logic to this is spot on.
I was stuck in trying to connect the dots on university education and the next level of new jobs to be created. It’s true, a rigged system makes you question everything. Cheers Nate.
Another skill I would add to the list is Critical Thinking.
Good tips. My mental model for this topic is to essentially try to be a real world. Susan Calvin from Isaac asimov's iRobot series. Dr. Calvin is a robot psychologist essentially and debugs various failure modes that occur to robots within asimov's stories and essentially building that detective reasoning and understanding of robots seems pretty apt. And comparable for a large language models now
I had an interesting development this morning. It might be that the place to be looking is what Deleuze and Guattari call 'the virtual'. I was working on Cogito, the conversational enabling system i'm building with Claude. We don't store the content of conversations, we store the patterns found in the conversations. We stumbled into D & G territory and began to wonder if the big impact of AI will on be on the plane of the 'actual', but on the plane of 'the virtual', the horizon of possibility.
"We don't store the content of conversations, we store the patterns found in the conversations."--this gets at an idea kicking around that we're effectively generating tokens internally when we remember, because we're reconstructing the memory. Interesting stuff!
I work in the legal field and one of the most important things that we do in practice is engage people in natural conversation, negotiation, and conflict without the assistance or barrier of technology in between us. There’s something to be said for gaining and growing trust through those people skills. I know that the LLM‘s can pick up on nuances for us because we provide them so much of our personal information but we don’t get that same depth on the other parties. This is where we still need the skill to develop the ability to read people to engage with them in dynamic and empathetic conversation that also can pick up on the nuances. AI can do a good job as a boxing coach in the corner for us, but we still need to be able to provide that interactive skill and empathy apart or adjacent to it.
boxing coach is a good analogy actually. I can tell a good lawyer by exactly that—the ability to have an incredibly high utility natural sounding conversation. There’s an art to it that doesn’t come through in typical text corpus training.
Thanks for the NAIT perspective. Your dissection is profound. Yet you leave meat on this bone for some to pick. I told my boss soon he won’t need me. He said, noo you’re my eyes and eyes and ears out there. Validates some of your knowledge.
As an old-school mechanical power engineer, it has for sometime been about experience when you hire someone. What have you done, not so much where did you go to school. The truth is people right out of school don't know much. AI developers are a small slice of the employment future. We will continue to need human makers and doers for decades to come.
Hi Nate, thanks for sharing such a great piece—really thought-provoking. It got me thinking about the kinds of roles that will become increasingly crucial in a world where AI holds absolute mastery over knowledge:
1. Entrepreneurs – people who can define what needs to be done and commit to a clear direction.
2. AI Technicians / Industry Experts – those who understand when and how AI can go wrong, and how to correct or guide it.
3. Bridge-builders between tech and people – roles like Sales, Project Managers, Product Managers, and Analysts, who truly understand users, read human behavior, build trust, and connect technology to human needs—both inside and outside the organization. This is where soft skills become indispensable.
This is perfect:
The answer emerging from successful AI adoptions: we shift from "I am what I know" to "I am how I connect, judge, and create meaning from what machines know."
I've often told high school and college classes that their imagination is the currency of their lives and that human connection is the bank. I know, it sounds esoteric, but it isn't.
Great post!
My kid rolls her eyes when I tell her stuff like that but… it’s still true
Our kids have been raised on tech and eastern spirituality so they get it. :)
Loved this. I might add one more skill. The ability to deeply understand the user/stakeholder problem and build toward that versus what you (the engineer, manager, etc.) want the problem to be. We too easily hone in on proxy problems to solve, rather than spend the time to truly understand the underlying user need.
This is the essence of agile: build what people want, so reduce waste. But there's more, the stakeholder often has a bias beyond the product. e.g. their bonus payments based on non-relevant targets (well, not relevant to delivery). So much delivery we see is tactical, not strategic, mainly because of weak senior teams, but also IT turnover of staff 12-18 months, means that strategic is rarely prioritised on the ground. Most people just want to get paid, look after their families, etc. People call me out for saying this, but I have owned companies and do now, and it is obvious. This aligns with Nate's perspective on goal setting. If every AI system delivered had an underlying corporate conscience, linked to the company's goals, strategy, mission, and values, the outputs would be quite different. So heres a update on your idea. Become skilled at defining precisely what the user needs whilst ensuring it is aligned to the strategy and direction of the company.
I’m chuckling because that last definition sounds suspiciously like what product managers are supposed to do lol
But if you work with product owners on the ground you will know they dont, they do what they are told to do.
oooooh this is a great one! strong agree. Peeling the onion is not something I see AI pushing on today, nor do I see much progress in that direction
Love this. Here are the skills I would add:
Presence:
Grounded awareness in the here-and-now. The ability to remain centered amid distraction and uncertainty. When AI pulls us into abstraction, presence reconnects us to intuition, embodiment, and genuine human connection.
Context Sensitivity:
Seeing the layers beneath surface-level data. AI generalizes from patterns—humans thrive when they recognize exceptions, nuance, and invisible context. Understanding the hidden story behind apparent facts is increasingly valuable.
Narrative Resonance:
Crafting stories that unify data, purpose, and vision into meaningful journeys. Machines produce endless content but lack authentic resonance. Humans build trust, alignment, and inspiration through narratives that move others deeply.
Relational Intelligence:
Navigating human complexity skillfully. AI excels at transactional interactions but struggles with subtleties of emotion, motive, and trust. Relational intelligence—empathy, attunement, emotional literacy—is indispensable currency.
Courageous Authenticity:
The willingness to express truth even when uncomfortable, risky, or unconventional. AI incentivizes conformity and safety. Authenticity is valuable precisely because it cannot be algorithmically optimized—it emerges from genuine vulnerability and courage.
Embodied Discernment:
Decision-making guided by somatic intuition rather than data alone. The body registers subtleties the mind overlooks. In a hyper-rational, data-driven world, embodied wisdom anchors clear, confident judgment.
these are good ones!
AI can make a huge difference anytime we're dealing with tame/solvable problems, like picking the optimal route for a courier or comparing an X-ray scan with a million others. It cannot (yet) do much when we're dealing with wicked/unsolvable problems, like what is a humanistic way to algorithmically manage a gig work platform or does it still make sense to keep treating a dying patient?
AI takes away the complicated problems and leaves to us the complex ones. It tackles all information and knowledge but it leaves us the wisdom. If we care to have any.
yes! Honestly wicked problems is probably a whole writeup on its own—I don’t think wicked problems are widely known outside the ML community
I mainly use ChatGPT and cursor. I’d like to see them generalize all of the input that I’ve ever given them so we are evolving on the relationship and the knowledge base that we have created with each other instead of me having to keep referencing specifics. It would help with flow / the ability to forward think / come to the conclusion or the next pitfall together / light up blind spots.
the amnesia is really tough isn’t it?!
Great Ken. I’ll shoot you an email.
Amber, I'm working hard on a system that will actively 'remember' all your conversations and create an 'enduring' picture of you. I'd love to talk more about your experience and what's you're looking for. ken@8thfold.com
On the other hand, our tastes seem already to be highly influenced by the AI algorithms of the various tech companies. Do we stand a chance?
where there’s life there’s hope lol
If you watch TV weather forecasters these days, they are always talking about how they believe one model is more correct than the other on a particular forecast. Which model that is changes from day to day. At least that's a familiar-to-me example.
my weather forecaster is not that sophisticated lol
Very good article, but I can't identify with anything. I'm starting college for the first time at 48 (pedagogy) with the goal of getting a teaching position and earning a steady salary. The reason is that I've never been successful in making a living online with my writing and service in Jungian psychology and astrology, knowledge I acquired self-taught over the course of eight years. The content is free. A degree is my last hope. I live in Mexico, in a small, industrial city where the economy revolves around renting rooms and selling food to students. The only way to get ahead is a credential to be a bureaucratic teacher.
I've tried every possible way to generate content that either aligns with what the audience seems to want or completely deviates from it, something more genuinely mine. I've been unsuccessful. I've tried creating a YouTube channel, but AI assistants that produce professional videos come at a price; anything worthwhile to generate content comes at a price. But if you produce high-quality information, even through an article without audiovisual production, no one wants to pay for it.
To live while I use my salary to pay for my studies, I depend on selling astrological readings or donations. I'm screwed all around. I can't get any clients, and no one donates anything or subscribes to my blog. A degree is my last hope.
Hi Norsan, thanks for sharing your story. I can feel how frustrating it's been trying to make your knowledge pay off. I definitely respect your decision to go back to college - that takes guts. While my piece went a different direction, I'm genuinely rooting for you to find the stability you're looking for!
This is gold! Thank you for posting this. I have been writing for parents, to help them make sense of the world, and then guide their kids. Your approach and logic to this is spot on.
I was stuck in trying to connect the dots on university education and the next level of new jobs to be created. It’s true, a rigged system makes you question everything. Cheers Nate.
Another skill I would add to the list is Critical Thinking.
thanks for the kind words! I’m so glad it’s helpful for you. Yep, critical thinking is definitely one I emphasize as a parent lol
Yup, the skill that can’t be taken away, or easily replaced.
Good tips. My mental model for this topic is to essentially try to be a real world. Susan Calvin from Isaac asimov's iRobot series. Dr. Calvin is a robot psychologist essentially and debugs various failure modes that occur to robots within asimov's stories and essentially building that detective reasoning and understanding of robots seems pretty apt. And comparable for a large language models now
oh that’s an interesting callback! Makes sense
I had an interesting development this morning. It might be that the place to be looking is what Deleuze and Guattari call 'the virtual'. I was working on Cogito, the conversational enabling system i'm building with Claude. We don't store the content of conversations, we store the patterns found in the conversations. We stumbled into D & G territory and began to wonder if the big impact of AI will on be on the plane of the 'actual', but on the plane of 'the virtual', the horizon of possibility.
"We don't store the content of conversations, we store the patterns found in the conversations."--this gets at an idea kicking around that we're effectively generating tokens internally when we remember, because we're reconstructing the memory. Interesting stuff!
i do believe studies of human memory have found that only small 'kernels' are actually stored and then the 'memory' is 'reconstituted' on demand
I work in the legal field and one of the most important things that we do in practice is engage people in natural conversation, negotiation, and conflict without the assistance or barrier of technology in between us. There’s something to be said for gaining and growing trust through those people skills. I know that the LLM‘s can pick up on nuances for us because we provide them so much of our personal information but we don’t get that same depth on the other parties. This is where we still need the skill to develop the ability to read people to engage with them in dynamic and empathetic conversation that also can pick up on the nuances. AI can do a good job as a boxing coach in the corner for us, but we still need to be able to provide that interactive skill and empathy apart or adjacent to it.
boxing coach is a good analogy actually. I can tell a good lawyer by exactly that—the ability to have an incredibly high utility natural sounding conversation. There’s an art to it that doesn’t come through in typical text corpus training.
🤣 oh no
Thanks for the NAIT perspective. Your dissection is profound. Yet you leave meat on this bone for some to pick. I told my boss soon he won’t need me. He said, noo you’re my eyes and eyes and ears out there. Validates some of your knowledge.
Yep, I think your boss is right :)
As an old-school mechanical power engineer, it has for sometime been about experience when you hire someone. What have you done, not so much where did you go to school. The truth is people right out of school don't know much. AI developers are a small slice of the employment future. We will continue to need human makers and doers for decades to come.
My grandad was a plumber and i had some memorable summers working on houses he flipped—have a very visceral understanding of this!
Hi Nate, thanks for sharing such a great piece—really thought-provoking. It got me thinking about the kinds of roles that will become increasingly crucial in a world where AI holds absolute mastery over knowledge:
1. Entrepreneurs – people who can define what needs to be done and commit to a clear direction.
2. AI Technicians / Industry Experts – those who understand when and how AI can go wrong, and how to correct or guide it.
3. Bridge-builders between tech and people – roles like Sales, Project Managers, Product Managers, and Analysts, who truly understand users, read human behavior, build trust, and connect technology to human needs—both inside and outside the organization. This is where soft skills become indispensable.
Would love to hear your take on this perspective!
THANK YOU !!!