Why Humans Matter Most In The Age Of Ai Jacob Taylor On Linkedin

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 29, 2025, 8:54 PM

why humans matter most in the age of ai jacob taylor on linkedin

Jacob Taylor, Thomas Kehler, Sandy Pentland, Martin Reeves Janice C. Eberly, Molly Kinder, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence D. W. Schmidt, Jón Steinsson Rosanne Haggerty, Ruby Bolaria Shifrin, Jacob Taylor, Kershlin Krishna, Sara Bronin, Nick Cain, Xiomara Cisneros, Adam Ruege, Henri Hammond-Paul, Jamie Rife, Josh Humphries, Beth Noveck

While many focus on the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence, Brookings Fellow Jacob Taylor asks, how can AI amplify human intelligence? In this Q&A, he discusses why collaboration, creativity, and human judgment remain key to solving global challenges. https://lnkd.in/eBCx5kQ8 AI AND THE FUTURE OF WORK: WHAT MATTERS NOW Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping the global economy, initiating a paradigm shift in the very nature of work and human interaction. In this article, I advocate for a deep-seated belief that sustainable organizational transformation emerges from a conscious corporate culture. This culture is organically nurtured through the consistent cultivation of individual habits.

*** Our strategic imperative is not to resist the inevitable currents of technological change, but to consciously direct their flow, ensuring humanity retains its central, vital role in shaping progress. *** Read More: https://lnkd.in/gGZ84DVX #FutureOfWork #Consciousness Rivalry vs Resonance Competition fuels progress, until it doesn’t. Across industries, academia, and technology, we’ve watched rivalries sharpen minds and split ecosystems. When the goal becomes “winning the field” instead of expanding the field, collaboration slows. Ideas that should connect stay siloed behind pride, policy, or protocol.

At Inner Resonance™, we’re studying a different model, one where rivalry becomes resonance: a system of mutual calibration where difference generates discovery instead of division. Because the future isn’t built by isolated teams guarding breakthroughs; it’s built by networks that learn to synchronize signal, share data, and evolve together. Let’s replace competition that fractures with coherence that scales. #InnerResonance #Collaboration #Innovation #Leadership #AI #HumanCenteredTech Generative AI can act like a high-performing collaborator on team projects, propelling innovative thinking, says research by Harvard Business School's Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Raffaella Sadun, and Karim Lakhani. They offer four recommendations for applying AI to teamwork.

The research was conducted with Charles Ayoubi of ESSEC Business School, Dr. H /Hila Lifshitz (Hán, X也) of University of Warwick - Warwick Business School, Ethan Mollick and Lilach M. of The Wharton School, and a team from Procter & Gamble that includes Yi Han, Jeff Goldman, Hari Nair, and Stewart Taub. Read the findings: https://lnkd.in/ekaG5TUb If your team isn’t jumping on AI… it might be a sign they trust you. When people care about the quality of their work, they hesitate with anything new.

That’s not laziness - it’s integrity. So if your team is asking hard questions about AI? If they’re cautious? Thoughtful? Even skeptical? Good.

That’s what responsible adoption looks like. Pushback isn’t the problem. - silence is. When we treat curiosity as resistance, we shut down the very people we need to lead change. So if your people are poking holes, naming risks, asking “what about equity?”, don’t speed past that. Pull up a chair and listen in.

That’s not friction - that’s culture in motion! One of the great treats of my professional life in recent years has been to work closely with the indomitably collaborative spirit of Jacob Taylor. From his anthropological insights on the role of narratives in accelerating human cooperation to daily gems on how A.I. might boost team performance, Jacob is constantly providing me with "aha" moments in how to think about the world. All while building on his background as a former professional rugby player! This little interview provides a nice overview of some of his latest thoughts and approaches: https://lnkd.in/egtsU78f The Brookings Institution

“Frankly, I think we’ll see that being human is going to matter more than ever in an age of AI. It’s going to force us to really clarify what being human really means. For the hopeful among us, it’s time to really speak out for what those human characteristics are.” Powerful quote! Thank you Jacob Taylor, John McArthur 🙏🏽 GPUs, LLMs, transformers and algorithms. Every discussion is dominated by these and more.

As each of these get smarter by the day, it's easy to think we're heading toward a future (or you might already feel we already are in the future) where machines make all the... But the more we experiment with AI, the longer strides we take in the AI adoption journey, the more one thing becomes clear - The value of human judgment isn’t diminishing, it is actually... At Covasant, when we started thinking what is the best way to describe what we are doing, what resonated with most of us was in the way we bring out our solutions “AI Driven. Human-Inspired.” Well, when everyone is becoming AI first, AI native, and while we also fall into that category, we strongly believe that the human element is critical to shape the future of work, collaboration and... We are living in an era where AI can process more data in a minute than a person could in a lifetime.

It can summarize meetings, predict market movements, write code, and even create art. The conversation around AI is often laced with fear — fear of jobs disappearing, of creativity being diluted, of human work becoming irrelevant. But here’s the truth: AI will make the human element more valuable, not less. If you strip away the hype, there are two kinds of work in the world: Sports will never be replaced by AI because sports aren’t just about performance, they're about emotion. The thrill of a game, the roar of the crowd, the heartbreak of a loss, the pride of a win.

AI might help athletes train smarter, prevent injuries, or improve strategy, but it will never replicate the feeling of watching a championship game in person. Blue-collar and skilled trade jobs — electricians, welders, mechanics, construction crews — have a tangible, real-world output that AI can’t physically produce without a human in the loop. Artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, but it does not operate in a vacuum. Humans design, guide, monitor and improve these systems at every step. In fact, every AI system – from a chatbot to an industrial robot – is ultimately a tool built for human-defined purposes. We program its goals, feed it data, and supervise its outputs.

History shows that every major technology – from the personal computer to the internet – has led to vast economic growth and new jobs when paired with human initiative. For example, McKinsey reports that the advent of PCs and the web created over 19 million jobs in the US (a net gain of 15.8 million) because people used the new tools to do... Likewise, analysts predict that AI can add trillions to the global economy if we leverage it wiselymckinsey.com. But realizing those gains depends on people: setting the right goals, providing feedback and oversight, and applying creativity and judgment. AI systems do not autonomously decide why to solve a problem – that remains a human choice. We determine the objectives and constraints under which AI operates.

As the World Economic Forum notes, AI is “ultimately a prediction machine” with no intrinsic sense of purpose or ethicsweforum.org. We must therefore set its parameters and define what counts as success. In practice this means embedding human vision and values into AI projects: choosing which problems to tackle (for climate, healthcare, commerce, etc.) and how success is measured. Without that human framing, AI would lack meaningful direction. Modern AI (especially large language models and other generative systems) actually learns from us. Techniques like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) show that continuous human supervision is built into training.

In RLHF, people review AI outputs and rate or correct them, and the system learns over time from that feedback. As a TechTarget analysis explains, “AI needs a lot of human feedback” – models are fine-tuned by humans ranking outputs or providing labelstechtarget.com. Security experts likewise emphasize that human-in-the-loop (HITL) processes are essential safeguards. They note that without human intervention, an AI will simply repeat mistakes (for example, mis-classifying a face) over and oversecuritymagazine.comsecuritymagazine.com. In high-stakes applications (like medicine, security, or self-driving cars), humans remain the final arbiters of safety. Humans catch edge cases, false positives or bias that automated systems may miss.

AI excels at automating known tasks, but true innovation and adaptation remain human fortes. Machines can remix existing information and optimize solutions within narrow scopes, but they lack imagination. Breakthrough ideas – like inventing the smartphone or pivoting to a new business model – often come from human intuition. AI has no “aha!” moments of its own; it’s not conscious or curious. In fact, research suggests that when routine tasks are automated, humans are freed up to focus on creative, strategic workweforum.org. For example, automating data analysis or basic reporting with AI can allow people to ask deeper questions, design new products, or explore uncharted opportunities.

AI itself has no built‑in morality or empathy. It follows whatever objective we give it – which is why human values must be explicitly encoded and enforced. We decide what counts as ethical behavior, fair outcomes, and privacy protection. In practice, this means humans must supervise AI to prevent biases or harm. As WEF observers point out, AI “lacks the capacity for judgement”weforum.org. It can flag data trends, but only a person can interpret them in context and weigh ethical implications.

Why Humans Matter Most In The Age Of Ai Jacob Taylor On Linkedin

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