What It Means to Be Talented in the AI Age

The more things change, the more they stay the same: Why AI highlights the critical role of foundational aspects of talent.

Whatever people (including me) tell you, nobody really knows if AI is overhyped or under-hyped: because that would require knowing where AI will end, and the only certain thing about the future is that nobody (including AI) has any data on it.

Like most technological revolutions, AI’s impact may be nonlinear, messy, and laced with contradictions. Also, AI is already so broad and wide-reaching (partly because growing regulation makes almost any data science qualify as AI) that making any general statements about it would be like making general statements about the internet, the digital revolution, or technology.

What we do know is that AI is already transforming the labor market, while simultaneously injecting massive uncertainty into organizations’ planning and strategy efforts: in the famous words of Tom Peters, “if you are not confused, you are not paying attention”. For instance, Goldman Sachs estimates that up to 300 million full-time jobs globally could be exposed to automation through generative AI alone. Meanwhile, McKinsey projects that generative AI could add up to $4.4 trillion in economic value annually, but only if organizations successfully redeploy workers into new kinds of jobs. In short: change is here, and the only certainty is more change, whether incremental or exponential.

The Three Big Shifts AI Has Triggered

1. Nobody knows what will happen to current jobs. Even if your role isn’t going to be replaced by an AI, chances are high it’ll be replaced by a human who uses AI better than you. The Copilot era means every knowledge worker is now being measured not only by what they do, but how efficiently they augment themselves. So while job loss due to AI is still statistically rare, job transformation is now ubiquitous. If you haven't already reimagined how you add value in your current role, you're likely behind.

2. Nobody knows what future jobs will look like. Historical patterns suggest AI will eliminate fewer jobs than it creates, but there’s a catch: the people displaced aren’t automatically equipped to take the new jobs. During the industrial revolutions, manual laborers didn’t seamlessly become machinists or engineers. Similarly today, the skills mismatch remains a huge barrier. The World Economic Forum predicts that 44% of workers’ core skills will change in the next five years.

3. Educational credentials are being devalued. Degrees and diplomas are becoming weaker signals of employability. A 2022 Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute study found that "degree inflation" is receding as employers increasingly hire based on skills, not titles. Meanwhile, skepticism grows around whether schools and universities are preparing students for a future of work increasingly defined by AI, adaptability, and digital fluency.

Talent: Same Same, But Different

So what does it mean to be talented today? Surprisingly, the fundamentals haven’t changed much. Talent still means standing out. In most domains, a small number of people account for a large portion of value creation — the classic Pareto principle. The question is: how do you join the vital few?

While technical expertise is being automated and commoditized, foundational soft skills are surging in importance. Research across industries suggests four personal attributes remain core to high potential:

• Intelligence (the ability to learn)
• Curiosity (the willingness to learn)
• Drive (the willingness to work hard)
• EQ (the ability to understand and manage yourself and others)

These meta-skills aren’t new, but they are newly urgent. In a world where ChatGPT can write your first draft, analyze code, and summarize research, what matters is how well you frame the problem, interpret the output, and interact with others to turn it into action.

One useful metaphor: AI is like a smartphone. It doesn’t make you smarter, but it can make you look very dumb if you don’t know how to use it. Just as a time traveler from the 1960s would struggle to navigate modern life without learning how to operate a phone, a talented professional in 2025 who hasn’t learned to work with AI tools is out of step with reality.

Today, talent is about interacting with AI better than your peers. But it’s also about doing what AI can’t do — or what the average human using AI still can’t do as well as a talented human using AI. Talented individuals have more expertise to prompt better, edit more precisely, and ignore AI when needed. They know when to delegate to the machine and when to override it. In that sense, talent now includes discernment in how we collaborate with intelligent systems.

At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that talent is also an attribution: not a fixed, objective quality, but a perception others have about your capacity to outperform most people. Being seen as talented means being seen as exceptional in context — especially in your ability to adapt, contribute, and create value in ways others can’t or don’t.

What Next?

It’s tempting to think that AI will eventually level the playing field, automating most of the work and minimizing the role of talent. But consider this: in Formula 1 racing, cars account for the majority of performance, yet drivers still make a critical difference. In elite soccer, the biggest predictor of success is how much a team spends on players, but great coaches still matter.

Even if AI ends up driving 70% of job performance, the remaining 30% could be the most differentiating slice — and it will likely hinge on judgment, creativity, ethics, and interpersonal skills.

That also means talent today lies in the choices we make. Choosing a career that’s less vulnerable to automation requires curiosity, humility, and adaptability. Roles in organizational design, people development, AI integration, and digital ethics will matter more, not less. So will the ability to help humans work better with machines.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Being talented still means being better than most at something that matters. In the AI age, what matters has shifted —but the need to rise to the top hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, it may be even more important than before.