"When Accenture announced plans to lay off 11,000 workers who it deemed could not be reskilled for AI, the tech consulting giant framed the decision as a training issue: some people simply cannot learn what they need to learn to thrive in the world of AI. But this narrative fundamentally misunderstands-and significantly underplays-the deeper challenge. Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, pointed to this bigger challenge recently when he said, " AI is going to change literally every job.""
"For instance, when a customer service rep's job changes from answering questions to managing AI escalations, they are no longer doing old-fashioned customer service-they are doing AI supervision in a customer service context. Their supervisor isn't managing people anymore; they are orchestrating a hybrid intelligence system composed of humans and AI. And HR isn't evaluating communication skills; they are assessing human-AI collaboration capacity. The job titles remain the same, but the actual work has become something entirely different."
Accenture framed layoffs as a training issue by labeling some workers unreskillable for AI, but that framing misses the deeper problem. AI will change virtually every job, forcing roles to be reimagined rather than incrementally updated. Customer-facing roles may shift from answering questions to managing AI escalations and supervising hybrid human-AI systems. Supervisors will orchestrate hybrid intelligence and HR will assess human-AI collaboration capacity instead of traditional skills. Short workshops on prompting are insufficient. The critical challenge is whether organizations can transform at the scale and speed that AI disruption demands.
Read at Fast Company
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