LinkedIn News’ Post

Every conversation I have around "What can I do about AI?" comes down to Taste and Trust. Taste: AI's good at replicating what is. Copying. But creating something new to delight? That's a human trait. Trust: Especially when it comes to building partnerships and large deals, it's hard for humans to cede that over to AI entirely. How do I bring this to work? I get to know my stakeholders and sponsors WELL. I learn what makes them tick, and what they generally prefer. I observe them. They learn about me. The programs I run are high-stakes. Fail, and we lose trust with many. We are stacking trust every day, and that's uniquely human.

This is an important conversation, and one I’ve spent my career thinking about. I wrote a recent book titled Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together that explores this idea from a slightly different lens. While much of the discussion around AI focuses on individual skills and soft traits, I’ve been equally interested in what becomes irreplaceable in the places we inhabit, the environments we occupy with others, and the experiences we take in through our senses. In my work, this shows up in physical places where human interaction and sensory activation come together. These are moments where presence, emotion, and shared experience create value that cannot be digitized or automated. The Five C’s are a helpful framework at the individual level. I would just add that irreplaceability is not only something we develop within ourselves, it’s something we can design into places, brands, and experiences. AI will continue to handle more of what is efficient and repeatable, which makes the human, the social, and the experiential even more valuable. The opportunity is not just to compete with AI, but to better understand and build around what it cannot replace. Looking forward to this event.

You guys do realize the reason they are encouraging AI is because Microsoft(LinkedIn's parent company) has a $83 Billion stake in that market? If nobody is willing to use(pay for) the AI than this investment will fail. Instead of investing in current LLM and Agentic systems people need to invest in Localized Neuromorphic Computing. The people that can develop and maintain those systems is where true value is. For those unaware Neuromorphic computing learns and grows without needing to retrain the whole model, and it only uses the necessary parts of it(it does not need to recalculate all the values

15 years as an architect taught me something that applies here perfectly: The best engineers were never the ones who knew every tool. They were the ones who could walk into ambiguity and find clarity. AI is extraordinarily good at pattern recognition. It is not good at navigating the messy, political, human reality of why a company actually needs what it says it needs. That gap — between what's asked and what's actually needed — is where the irreplaceable people live. As someone who now helps companies hire technical talent, I'd say the Five C's Ryan mentions map directly to what separates a good hire from a great one. Courage and curiosity especially. Those are the two I probe hardest in every conversation.

Love this because most people are thinking about AI the wrong way. AI doesn’t replace people. It replaces tasks. The people who get ahead are the ones who see that early. It’s not about using AI. It’s about how you position yourself around it. The “tasks, not titles” idea is spot on. But here’s what people miss: If everything you do can be handed to AI, it’s not a role problem. It’s a positioning problem.

The "five C's" sound good as sound bites, but fail miserably in the messy world of business. It doesn't matter how "curious" someone is if they cannot also doggedly solve problems by busting through walls, and throwing elbows at anyone or anything that stands in their way if necessary to get results. Ditto for creativity, communications, and compassion. They aren't valuable on their own, and such generic advice celebrates passivity over outcomes.

The rise of the portfolio career is really a story about the reclaiming of professional identity. For a long time, we were taught that a single title was the only way to build authority, but that model often forced us to leave parts of our talent at the door. Juggling multiple roles isn't just about diversifying income. It is about a deeper need for creative agency and resilience in a world where a single path no longer feels like a safe bet. The challenge now is for organizations to learn how to engage with a workforce that values its own freedom as much as its output.

I think this helps bring the debate more to what happened when PC's started to replace typewriters or smartphone adoption took hold in business. Technological innovation will always be there to increase individual productivity and for (collective) growth into new opportunities.

Spot on. When we "focus on what makes you uniquely human", we realize that AI isn’t the source of intelligence, we are. AI alone isn't creative; democratized AI is. Since data is the footprint of human experience, then Intelligence = Humans x Connection. Ultimately, "Humanity is the protocol", the one thing that can’t be disrupted. You cannot disrupt the soul because the soul is the ground upon which the disruptor stands. The goal shouldn't be individual gain, but using these tools to "enrich humanity collectively". That is where the true brilliance lies. "We must transition from using the machine to win the race, to using the machine to expand the track for everyone." The goal is not to build a smarter machine, but to use the machine to build a more profound humanity.

AI didn’t raise the bar—it erased average. Execution is cheap now; judgment, taste, and trust are the real leverage going forward. The winners won’t outwork AI—they’ll outthink where it should (and shouldn’t) be used. What’s one decision you make that AI still can’t?