AI is transforming everything about how we work - and it's doing it at a rapid pace unlike anything before it

This article is part of the " How AI is Changing Talent " series, which explores how AI is reshaping hiring, development, and retention. Twelve months ago, Jacqui Canney was ServiceNow's chief people officer, focused on talent strategy. Today, she's also the company's chief AI enablement officer - a title that didn't exist until recently. The two roles aren't separate, Canney told Business Insider. "They're one strategy, and the companies that understand that are going to be the winners." That shift, though, requires letting go of how most organizations have always structured work: by function, head count, and department. "Companies can't treat this as 'We're going to run an AI program over here, and it'll add capacity,'" she says. Instead, they need to ask: how does AI change the work across departments? "AI doesn't follow the same silos people do. That's why you build the workforce around the new workflow." Canney's approach isn't an outlier . Rather, it's a signal of how quickly AI has become part of work and our daily lives. Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, adoption has reached 54.6%. That's staggering compared to adoption rates for personal computers (19.7%) and the internet (30.1%) three years after they were widely introduced, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . Meanwhile, about 21% of US workers say that at least some of their job is now done with AI, an increase from 16% roughly a year ago, according to Pew Research Center. AI is transforming everything about work, from the jobs people do to how they do them. Organizations, meanwhile, are racing to prepare their people for what comes next . While the long-term impact remains uncertain, early patterns are emerging about what's working and what isn't. New job titles, big expectations AI's effect on the labor market is showing up everywhere: in how companies screen candidates , which skills command premium salaries, and how performance gets evaluated . Two structural shifts, in particular, stand out: new jobs are emerging, and old jobs are evolving. An authoritative count of new AI-specific job titles is hard to come by, but data show rapid growth. A report from software company Autodesk found that demand for roles like AI engineer jumped 143.2% in 2024, while prompt engineer rose 135.8%, and AI content creator increased 134.5%. Meanwhile, the number of jobs requiring AI skills rose 7.5% last year, even as total job postings fell 11.3%, according to research from consultancy PwC . Molly Roenna, global chief people officer at PR firm Weber Shandwick, sees this firsthand. Her company is increasingly seeking specialists in areas like AI integration and AI ethics, and it's recruiting from disciplines like behavioral science and data analytics. "We're hiring for a fundamentally different environment," Roenna says. "Meeting client expectations requires people who use technology as a force multiplier for insight and creativity, not just a shortcut for efficiency." The hiring process itself has evolved, too. Many of Weber Shandwick's interviews now include a...

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