Research firm Accenture, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, courier service UPS, Google, Ikea, U.S. software company Salesforce, and language-learning app Duolingo share one thing: They all laid off hundreds or thousands of employees, saying artificial intelligence (AI) would now perform their jobs.

“The fear of AI job replacement is very real, with many companies in 2025 openly admitting that the tech is eliminating jobs,” Isobel O’Sullivan, senior writer at Tech.co, a news and research platform, reported in October.

For employees to retain their jobs and advance in this increasingly AI-dominated world, they need the right character traits to leverage AI power, handle skeptics, and maintain a human element in decision-making.

AI, no AI

Since AI’s emergence in 2022 with the commercialization of ChatGPT, a chatbot, businesses have experienced significant shifts in their operations.

“More than half of organizations told [a Drexel University survey] that AI now drives daily decision-making, yet only 38% believe their employees are fully prepared to use it,” Murugan Anandarajan, a professor of decision sciences and management information systems at the University of Philadelphia, said in October. “Only 27% of recruiters say they’re comfortable with applicants using AI tools for tasks such as writing résumés or researching salary ranges. In other words, the same tools companies trust for business decisions still raise doubts when job seekers use them.”

This paradoxical view extends to employees. The College Hiring Outlook Survey, published by Drexel, found “86% of employers now offer internal training … yet only 36% say AI-related skills are important for entry-level roles. Most training still focuses on traditional skills rather than those needed for emerging AI jobs.

No more humans?

To prepare for an AI future, executives and decision-makers are replacing human workers with AI wherever possible. “Over the last year, I have seen a notable uptick in résumé circulation across my network,” said Prashant Pinge, co-founder of LemonEd, an India-based career counseling firm, in June. “Sharp professionals suddenly laid off, fresh grads struggling to land interviews, and teams being restructured in real time … Layoffs have become unnervingly frequent.”

He said “lower-level jobs [with]  routine, repetitive rule-based roles … will be hit hardest [as] tasks that took hours can now be completed in seconds.” They include data entry jobs, fundamental analysis, customer service scripts, and content generation at scale.

Experts can’t agree on whether this human replacement is temporary or permanent. Pinge said one group compares current layoffs to the internet’s early days, when those made redundant by the World Wide Web found other functions to perform. Others believe AI-related layoffs are permanent, as companies undergo a complete reset with AI “reshaping… the professional landscape,” Pinge said.

Ultimately, workers who remain are not only those whose tasks can’t be done by AI, yet. According to Anandarajan, “AI isn’t just replacing workers; it’s revealing who’s ready to work alongside it.”

Fluent in AI lingo

To keep their jobs and grow amid AI’s rapid proliferation, Pinge said, human employees need to fundamentally shift how they approach their careers.

That mindset change requires “human-AI fluency,” noted Anandarajan. “This means being able to work with smart systems, question their results, and keep learning as things change.”

That “fluency” needs to tackle the “biggest challenge … in expanding AI … ensuring compliance with ethical and regulatory standards and connecting AI to real business goals,” Anandarajan stressed. “These hurdles … are about good judgment.”

In October, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) stressed, “Fluency with AI requires more than reading analyst reports or scanning headlines; it develops through networks and exposure.” It added that such “fluency” will increase when “people embedded in more-diverse networks … across industries, regulators, startups and technologists … gain access to non-redundant information and as a result are more innovative than those in insular circles.”

AI “fluency” also requires “coaching and developing talent,” as “AI adoption succeeds only when leaders help their people learn to work differently,” said HBR. “Employees need coaching and psychological safety to experiment, make mistakes, and gradually re-skill.”

Right character

Employees also need “curiosity and judgment, [when using] intelligent tools,” Anandarjan said. Those two attributes are gradually superseding technical skills and experience. “For companies that are putting AI to work most effectively, hiring isn’t just about résumés anymore,” he noted.

Thinking out of the box is also critical. “Robots and machines can do many things,” said Bernard Marr, founder of Bernard Marr & Co., a consultancy. “But they struggle to compete with humans when it comes to our ability to create, imagine, invent, and dream.”

That mindset must come with analytical thinking, as it “will be all the more precious, particularly as we navigate the changing nature of the workplace and the changing division of labor between humans and machines.”

Human-to-human interaction skills also are critical. First is “emotional intelligence,” said Marr. “Given that machines can’t easily replicate humans’ ability to connect with other humans, it makes sense that those with high [emotional intelligence] will be in even greater demand in the workplace.”

Also, “interpersonal communication skills … using the right tone of voice and body language in order to deliver their message clearly,” as machines lack such nuances.

Managers need to acquire different leadership skills to be effective, as “project-based teams, remote teams and fluid organizational structures will probably become more commonplace,” he said.

He highlighted the growing importance of “diversity and cultural intelligence,” as AI systems are likely biased since training datasets usually have prejudices. Lastly, embracing change is indispensable. “The pace of change right now is startling, particularly when it comes to AI,” Marr said. “People will have to be agile and cultivate the ability to embrace change.”

Next-gen company

With more employees relying on AI, “new hybrid roles [will emerge] such as AI translators, who help decision-makers understand what AI insights mean and how to act on them, and digital coaches, who teach teams to work alongside intelligent systems,” said Anandarajan.

Those AI-specific roles require organizational change. “AI creates value only when organizations are redesigned to harness it,” HBR said. “Productivity gains come not from the technology itself but from complementary changes to processes, incentives, and structures. Too often, companies bolt AI onto legacy workflows and see little return.”

To modernize incumbent systems, “leaders must decide where to automate, where to augment human judgment, where to keep control fully human and how to deal with the ability that … AI often grants them to do more with fewer people.” The next step is “cultural change, [which] often goes hand in hand with … organizational redesign.”

Next, company leaders need to develop worker competencies, so they “can make full use of the technology’s potential to provide real strategic advantage,” according to HBR.

Their report added, successful AI integration is evident when “outputs are synthesized into briefings and documents that feed directly into senior-team reviews, allowing executives to debate tradeoffs with a richer, faster evidence base than human analysts alone could provide.”

To create such an organization, executives must “lead by example,” HBR noted. That comes from “using AI every day … in your personal and in your professional life.”

That usually doesn’t happen. “Senior leaders are more excited and less threatened by AI than their employees,” HBR said. Yet, “they don’t actually use the technology as much as their pronouncements about it might suggest. [That] raises concerns [among employees] that [managers] may be managing impressions rather than modeling adoption.”