AI Literacy Isn't the Skill That Will Save Us

I have been listening to the World Economic Forum’s AI and Jobs Series: What’s Next for Entry Level Workers. And while the higher education narrative I am hearing focuses heavily on AI literacy, the data suggests AI literacy is only one of many essential skills for career readiness. Others include relationship building, the ability to lean into and navigate uncertainty, collaboration, and judgment — profoundly human skills. And skills that higher education, generally, is not good at modeling or fostering.

College faculty are rightfully depleted. There is no additional time, compensation, recognition, or high fives for the work expected of them. The large majority of faculty are part-time and in community colleges that often means they work at multiple institutions, jumping through multiple organizational hoops. And many work other jobs outside of academia to make ends meet. They’re also now teaching in more than one modality, turning what used to be three course preps into four, five, or more.

Innovation is needed in higher education but implementing a technology alone is not innovation. Innovation requires changing the structures that support and guide the processes in an organization and the behaviors of the employees. And leadership requires being mindful of how people feel and centering messaging and expectations within that empathy.

AI literacy is one of the many skills that humans will be expected to have in many contexts in the future. But AI literacy is not as important as having an awareness of one’s emotions, being able to name them, and regulate them in the face of continuous uncertainty and change. It isn’t as important as having the discernment to know when it’s time coordinate a time to meet one-on-one with another person, lean in, and have an unstructured conversation and actively listen. It isn’t as important as building rapport with team members, working together to identify a plan to achieve a goal, checking in with each other regularly, and pivoting when needed. It isn’t as important as looping back to a peer to say, “I heard you earlier today. Are you ok?” Or having the ability to experience a tragedy, take time to process what happened, and then reframe your entire life differently to motivate yourself to get out of bed each day.

These skills require practice to develop them. If these skills were muscles, they’d be the functional muscles that get strengthened through alternative fitness activities like pilates. They’d be the muscles that every human relies on, even more as they age, to reach the top shelf, prevent a fall, pick up the dog bowl — they aren’t the biceps, the glutts, and the quads or any other of the major muscles that get built up through most workouts.

The traditional systems that college faculty work in and college students learn in do not support the development of these human skills. Innovation in higher education starts with centering human skills — to create conditions in which people feel seen, valued, and part of a community.