One of the Greatest Risks of Not Responsible AI Use: The Erosion of Human Competencies
Are We Automating Away the Future?
Most organizations are eagerly looking for ways to save time, reduce costs, and work faster with AI.
Yet if we unleash AI on everything that can be automated without a clear strategy, we risk eroding the critical human and professional capabilities on which long-term competitiveness depends.
The consequences could be far-reaching, affecting not only the future competitiveness of organizations but also the future of society as a whole.
When AI prepares an analysis, drafts a client response, creates the first version of a presentation, or conducts research, a task is removed from the system.
In many cases, a learning opportunity disappears with it.
These are often the very tasks through which people previously developed expertise and acquired the competencies that later enabled them to become skilled professionals and effective leaders.
The Third Wave of Business Transformation
We have entered a new era. In their book Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI, Paul Daugherty and James Wilson describe three major waves of business transformation.
The first wave was characterized by standardization. The era of Henry Ford and mass production focused on standardizing physical processes.
The second wave was the age of automation. During the IT revolution from the 1970s through the 1990s, information systems increasingly replaced administrative and routine knowledge-work tasks, often removing humans from the process altogether.
Today, we are living through the third wave. In this era, AI does far more than automate. It supports and increasingly takes over cognitive processes, analysis, decision preparation, and knowledge work.
The focus is shifting toward adaptive, real-time systems in which people and intelligent technologies work together and continuously adjust to changing circumstances.
- In the past, we focused on which tasks should be performed by humans and which by technology.
- Today, we are increasingly concerned with how humans and AI can work together in ways that create better outcomes than either could achieve alone.
Daugherty and Wilson refer to this space as the Missing Middle. It is the dynamic area where collaboration between humans and AI creates the greatest value.
According to the authors, the real value of AI lies in augmenting human capabilities. AI enables people to devote more time and energy to complex problems, judgment-based decisions, creative work, and meaningful human interactions.
This shift also requires new roles and new capabilities. The authors highlight three emerging roles:
- Trainers, who teach AI systems how to perform tasks and operate effectively.
- Explainers, who interpret and communicate AI-generated outputs in ways that people can understand and trust.
- Sustainers, who ensure that AI systems operate safely, ethically, and responsibly over time.
Many people view this primarily as an efficiency challenge. I see it as an organizational and human one.
How can we use AI in ways that strengthen human capabilities rather than diminish them?
Where Will Future Experts Come From?
When someone is an experienced expert today, it is easy to forget how they learned their profession in the first place.
Most of us did not begin with strategic decisions. We collected data, conducted analyses, prepared reports, edited presentations, responded to client inquiries, made mistakes, corrected them, and tried again.
At the time, many of these tasks seemed routine. Yet they were the building blocks of the professional knowledge, judgment, and expertise we later came to rely on.
People rarely become experts through a single breakthrough. Expertise is built through hundreds of small experiences accumulated over time.
An increasing number of studies and labor market trends suggest that organizations making intensive use of AI are reducing the number of entry-level positions. Many of these roles traditionally included tasks that served as the first steps in professional development.
- The more important question is where the experts of five or ten years from now will come from if previous generations learned their profession through exactly these kinds of tasks.
The Price of Short-Term Efficiency
When organizations introduce AI, the focus is often on how many hours can be saved, how much faster a process can become, or how significantly costs can be reduced.
Far less attention is paid to questions such as:
- What happens to the capabilities that are built through experience?
- How do critical and complex thinking skills develop?
- How do people acquire business judgment and a deeper understanding of their field?
- How do they learn to ask good questions, listen actively, and truly understand others?
- How do they learn to collaborate, build relationships, and navigate conflict?
These capabilities cannot simply be downloaded or switched on.
And the future is already here.
According to the Randstad 2025 Gen Z Workplace Blueprint, the number of junior-level positions requiring 0–2 years of experience declined by 29% globally compared to 2024, driven in large part by
And this trend is unlikely to stop. Many forecasts suggest that by 2030 the reduction in entry-level opportunities could reach 50–60% or even more in certain industries and professions.
When the Middle of the Development Path Disappears
Between being a beginner and becoming an expert, there has always been a development journey.
This is where much of the practice, experimentation, feedback, and learning takes place.
If we remove from the middle of that journey the tasks that have traditionally provided these learning opportunities, we may find ourselves facing an unusual situation.
We will still have entry-level employees.
We will still have experienced experts — at least for a while.
But the opportunities that once connected the two may gradually disappear.
Potential Consequences
1. An Early-Career Talent Crisis
Traditional career pathways, junior roles may begin to disappear. Fewer junior professionals will have opportunities to gain experience and develop their capabilities. Over time, this could lead to shortages of experienced mid-level and senior professionals.
2. A Gap in Professional Expertise
Organizations may begin to lose critical professional capabilities that today's senior experts developed over years of practice and experience. Future generations may simply have fewer opportunities to acquire these skills. The chain of knowledge transfer and professional development risks being broken.
3. The Erosion of Human Capabilities
Some of the capabilities that will be most valuable in the future may not fully develop or continue to mature. Critical and complex thinking, judgment, creativity, collaboration, communication, adaptability, and emotional intelligence all require practice and real-world experience. Without sufficient opportunities to exercise these capabilities, they may gradually weaken rather than strengthen.
We Need to Redesign Learning Pathways — Preserving Human Capabilities Must Become Part of the Business Strategy
Most AI initiatives focus on processes. That is entirely understandable, as this is where the fastest and most measurable results tend to appear.
At the same time, there are other questions that deserve attention and strategic focus, yet often remain unanswered:
❓ How will people learn in this new environment?
❓ Which human capabilities will be most critical for the future? How do we preserve and continue to develop them?
❓ Which tasks should be retained for developmental purposes?
❓ Where is hands-on human practice still essential?
❓ How do we create opportunities for experimentation and learning through experience?
❓ What kinds of experiences will shape the next generation of experts?
The answers to these questions will influence far more than productivity. They will shape the future capabilities, resilience, and competitiveness of our organizations.
AI Is Not Just Transforming Work
AI is not only reshaping the way work gets done. It is also changing how we think, how we learn, and how professional expertise is developed. As a result, the design of learning pathways and career journeys takes on an entirely new significance, one that extends beyond the responsibility of individual organizations.
As we redesign work with the help of AI, we need to devote equal attention to how future generations will learn, gain experience, and develop the capabilities we want to build on in the long term.
If many of the entry-level tasks that traditionally served as stepping stones into a profession disappear or change significantly, the conventional pathways of professional development will also change. Organizations alone are unlikely to have all the answers.
The role of primary, secondary, and higher education institutions is likely to become increasingly important. We may see the emergence of practical projects, simulations, and learning environments that replicate experiences previously acquired naturally in the workplace. Part of professional socialization and capability development may shift into these educational settings.
The educational institutions that can successfully adapt to this new reality will be the ones that remain competitive and relevant.
If the capabilities that become more valuable in the age of AI are those in which humans can maintain a long-term advantage, then critical and complex thinking, creativity, curiosity, collaboration, communication, emotional intelligence, and adaptability must be intentionally developed from an early age.
These capabilities are not acquired through a single training program or university course. They are built over years through practice, feedback, problem-solving, experimentation, and human interaction. They develop through real-world experiences and meaningful engagement with others.
This is why every level of education should incorporate the deliberate and systematic development of these capabilities into the curriculum.
In the long run, the question is not only what knowledge we pass on to future generations. It is also how we prepare them for a world in which human capabilities represent one of the most important sources of competitive advantage.
The role of governments and families will also be critical in this process.
This is not simply an organizational challenge. It is a societal responsibility.