Soft skills in IT has been a highly written topic for as long as I can remember, however, the importance of these skills might be shifting due to remote work imposed by the pandemic and the evolution of artificial intelligence tools. Such skills as teamwork, resilience, creativity and empathy are the main foundations for an appreciated IT profile, but one of the most important, is communication. The way we express and understand messages across different audiences is an essential skill. Communication, being part of human nature, is a crucial skill for most jobs nowadays, especially in remote environments. It is one of the main tools to influence others’ opinions about us and perception of our work.
Some of these skills — particularly communication — might become scarce because of the lack of human interaction caused by remote work and the few human interactions that we have, we try to automate using AI tools.
The real question is: What is the impact of the continuous use of these AI-mediated communication on our skills over time?
The impact is still unclear, but the growing use of artificial intelligence to write our emails, summarise meetings or even select possible candidates for a job is resulting in a standardised communication - almost as a cognitive translator for our intentions - and such tools should be used for productivity, i.e. basic repetitive work other than a total replacement for our communication tasks, causing us to abandon our underlying natural capabilities like judgement, intuition or empathy.
As people become aware of the heavy usage of AI to modify and generate our communication along with the AI evolution to be harder to detect and potentially be used to manipulate and influence others, it can over time affect our impression formation and lead to a decrease in trustworthiness and empathy in non-face-to-face communication.
Other skills might be affected as well since communication is not the only purpose for AI usage. Creativity, resilience under pressure, problem-solving, and critical thinking are some of the capabilities that might be affected by this prolonged AI usage, as we tend to lose the skills that we don’t use. One way not to lose some skills is to write an article without using AI. It might not be the best written article, but at least it is opinionated and genuine.
It’s important to make the best use of AI to create value with low effort while keeping in mind the long-term impacts on us and our relationships. AI has been learning from our communication patterns, and we should consciously learn from it as well. I still believe that communication as a soft skill is more important than ever since we are competing with a computer for effective communication, and we need that extra effort to generate trust and complicity to build professional relationships with both our colleagues and clients.
