I spent a year interviewing and listening to over 50 tech leaders talk about AI. Here are the 4 biggest lessons.

Over the past year, I listened to more than 50 tech leaders speak about AI. Here are the biggest takeaways on how AI is reshaping work - and what's next. AI fluency and strong soft skills are becoming table stakes at work. I've listened to and interviewed more than 50 tech leaders this year, from executives running trillion-dollar firms to young founders betting their futures on AI. Across boardrooms, conferences, and podcast interviews, the people building our AI future kept returning to the same four themes: 1. Use AI, because someone who understands AI better might replace you This is the line I heard most often. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said it multiple times this year. "Every job will be affected, and immediately. It is unquestionable. You're not going to lose your job to an AI, but you're going to lose your job to someone who uses AI," he said at the Milken Institute's Global Conference in May. Other tech leaders echoed his view, with some saying that younger workers may actually have an edge because they are already comfortable using AI tools. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Cleo Abram's "Huge Conversations" YouTube show in August that while AI will inevitably wipe out some roles, college graduates are better equipped to adjust. "If I were 22 right now and graduating college, I would feel like the luckiest kid in all of history," Altman said, adding that his bigger concern is how older workers will cope as AI reshapes work. Fei-Fei Li , the Stanford professor known as the "godmother of AI," said in an interview on "The Tim Ferriss Show" published earlier this month that resistance to AI is a dealbreaker. She said she won't hire engineers who refuse to use AI tools at her startup, World Labs. This shift is already showing up in everyday roles. An accountant and an HR professional told me they're using AI tools , including vibe coding, to level up their skills and stay relevant. 2. Soft skills matter more in the AI era Another consensus I've heard among tech leaders is that AI makes soft skills more valuable. Salesforce's chief futures officer, Peter Schwartz , told me in an interview in May that "the most important skill is empathy, working with other people," not coding knowledge. "Parents ask me what should my kids study, shall they be coders? I said, 'Learn how to work with others,'" he said. LinkedIn's head economist for Asia Pacific, Chua Pei Ying, also told me in July that she sees soft skills like communication and collaboration becoming increasingly important for experienced workers and fresh graduates. As AI automates parts of our job and makes teams leaner, the human part of the job is starting to matter more. 3. AI is evolving fast - and superintelligence is coming As the year went on, the stakes around AI's future began to feel bigger and more real. Tech leaders increasingly spoke about chasing artificial general intelligence, or AGI, and...

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