What it means to be an Expert in an AI World

Generative AI will redefine what we mean by expertise.  

Much as Google devalued the steel-trap memory, electronic calculators speeded up complex calculations, Wikipedia displaced the printed encyclopedia and online databases diminished the importance of a vast physical library, so, too, platforms like ChatGPT will profoundly alter the most prized skills.

According to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an organizational psychologist and professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia, the skills that will be most in demand (in an AI world) will be the ability to:   

1. Know what questions to ask. The quality and value of AI-powered tools’ responses hinge on the prompts it is asked. Better prompts elicit richer and more robust responses. 

2. Go beyond crowdsourced knowledge. Advanced and specialized domain and subject matter expertise will become more valuable, since AI-produced responses will inevitably contain errors or oversimplifications. The capacity to spot inaccuracies, miscalculations, mistakes in coding and other boo-boos and correct errors or complicate understanding will be highly valued.

3. Leverage AI-generated insights into decisions and actions. Information becomes most valuable when it is actually applied in real-world contexts: when we solve problems or translate ideas into tangible products and services. The ability to implement solutions is, of course, well beyond AI’s current capabilities.  

As Chamorro-Premuzic puts it succinctly, “If we want to retain an edge over machines, it is advisable that we avoid acting like one.” In other words, if a program can do a job as well as a person, then humans shouldn’t duplicate those abilities; they must surpass them.  

Michael Patrick Rutter and Steven Mintz writing in Inside Higher Ed