Skill decay: Is AI eroding your workforce’s ability to think?

“What we need to do is measure and quantify and reward thinking for yourself with AI. Because that will be the value add of humans. Everybody’s got access to the same AI systems. What will make a person valuable is not their ability to use those systems, but their ability to add value when they use those systems.”

Green’s lab is working with companies and college admissions offices on ways to identify and quantify what he calls “idea value,” the distinct intellectual contribution a person makes beyond what any AI system generates. The argument is that if employers start assessing and rewarding it, people will think for themselves even when AI offers an easier path.

“It really takes that level of rubber meets the road, high-stakes assessment to make people actually do the thing that’s less easy,” he said.

Jarrahi pushes the solution into workflow design itself. He recommends building parallel processes that require employees to make independent decisions and challenge AI-driven outputs, rather than simply reviewing and approving them. He also introduces a framework for the skills HR should be actively protecting.

Jarrahi draws a distinction between two types of skills HR should be thinking about. Cooperative skills are those needed to work effectively alongside AI, including the critical literacy to evaluate and challenge what it produces. Competitive skills are the uniquely human capabilities, judgment, contextual reasoning, relational intelligence, that employees need to actively preserve.