Humans versus AI: Don’t get into the wrong fight

The calculators are coming

The dominant narrative around AI in the workplace often boils down to a gladiatorial match: humans on one side, machines on the other. Will we beat the machines? Will they take our jobs? But this framing is not just tired — it’s dangerous.

The real opportunity isn’t humans vs. machines, but humans with machines. Think augmented humans.

Just as calculators didn’t replace mathematicians, AI won’t necessarily replace humans — but it will force us to rethink what it means to be human at work. In fact, we might be entering an era where bringing your humanity to work, quirks and all, is a key element of your value proposition.

But we must acknowledge that AI is better at pattern recognition, computation, and task repetition. Humans excel at ambiguity, empathy, storytelling, intuition, and sensemaking in messy, uncertain environments.

We need to shift the conversation from "how can I do what I’ve always done, but faster or better?" to "what is my new role in an AI-augmented organisation?"

The human edge

In a machine-enhanced world, our value doesn’t lie in doing what AI can do — it lies in what it can’t do (yet). That includes:

• Judgement in uncertain or morally grey situations

• Empathy in leadership, healthcare, education, and beyond

• Meaning-making — we interpret, frame, and storytell

• Physical intelligence — movement, performance, presence

• Relationship-building — trust, influence, collaboration

• Insight generation – particularly where the dataset is very small.

• Adaptiveness – Today AI can be trained to do something but will struggle to learn something new. And even if it does learn something new, it loses the ability to do what it did. Whereas humans evolve and have the capability to synthesise their skills.

Rather than clinging to routine work that machines now do better, we should be leaning into these more human dimensions. Employers need cognition to fuel innovation, though many haven’t woken up to that yet. Artificial cognition is the talk of the town, but those that can bring their natural cognition to bear will be very much in demand.

From competitor to collaborator

So the future of work isn’t about defeating AI — it’s about designing careers and organisations where humans and machines co-evolve. The best workers will be those who:

• Use AI to amplify their impact

• Know when to trust data, and when to override it

• Bring ethical, emotional, and ecological intelligence to tech-infused systems

• Help build cultures where AI is a tool, not a tyrant

  
  

Final Thought

If you’re asking “Will AI replace me?” you’re already framing your career as a set of tasks. Flip the script: What am I uniquely capable of sensing, deciding, and doing — in partnership with AI?

For the last few centuries the majority of workers ‘turned handles’. Today, we need creative problem solvers. Increasing disruption, gives rise to new problems. The future belongs not to the most efficient worker, but to the most adaptive one.