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- As companies experiment with artificial intelligence, many white-collar roles are already changing.Extroverts could stand to benefit if AI increases the premium on soft skills at work.Experts debate whether AI tools will make us better or worse at communicating with each other.
Christian Schneider once had to psych himself up to talk to customers or make fundraising pitches to investors.
The CEO and cofounder of the startup fileAI describes himself as an introvert who's been able to push himself to go beyond what he finds comfortable. That's part of being human, he said.
"We have to adapt," Schneider, whose company helps companies use their unstructured data, told Business Insider.
Some of his fellow introverts could soon have to embrace Schneider's can-do approach or risk being sidelined by their more outgoing peers. That's because as AI takes over more tasks, much of the work that remains could involve human interactions, workplace observers told BI.
"The extraverted personality has potentially an advantage here," Schneider said, because certain tasks can't be offloaded as easily to computers. For instance, a sales team might use AI to help with data entry or analyze call transcripts, but ChatGPT can't wine and dine a potential client — at least for now.
A greater emphasis on these human tasks could be worrisome news for introverts and, of course, a win for the glad-handers. Even when they're good at what they do, some extroverts are able to propel their careers with a frenzy of fist bumps and finger guns.
"The personality hire might be the most safe in the face of AI because what they can do is read a room. They can stand out. They can be charming," Elizabeth Lotardo, a leadership consultant, told BI.
At least for now, she said, people who can easily build relationships in the workplace and draw insights from colleagues could have an edge.
"That is organizational currency that AI cannot replicate, generally," said Lotardo, author of the book "Leading Yourself."
AI is already changing workplace communication
Schneider, from fileAI, said he expects that interpersonal skills will become "super important" as AI absorbs even more of the tasks that are currently keeping workers busy.
"You're going to need a lot less people doing these things that keep them on their laptops eight hours a day," he said.
Some labor market observers warn that roles comprised of routine tasks face the greatest risk of automation, though some companies hope to have AI take on far more.
AI might create a premium on human-to-human communication, yet it might also mean we become worse at it.
Vanessa Druskat, an associate professor of organizational behavior and management at the University of New Hampshire's Paul College of Business and Economics, describes herself as an introvert.
She said one worry she has is that when people use AI to interact less often with others and to create "nice, clean, empathetic emails or texts," the part of the brain that handles those responsibilities could begin to atrophy.
"The way the brain works is it has kind of a use-it-or-lose-it capacity," Druskat said. If we outsource too many interactions to AI, she said, our own abilities are likely to weaken.
Druskat said that her concerns for introverts are similar to what she worries about in general for her students. Those who are using AI to write their professional emails could lose the ability to determine the "appropriate emotion" for the close of a message, she said.
"They're mental skills that we develop," said Druskat.
How AI could help introverts thrive
While Druskat sees risks in introverts losing some ability to communicate with others at work if they rely too much on AI, there can be a tangible boost for more reserved employees.
Brian Smith is an organizational psychologist who runs a leadership advisory firm. He's seen AI supercharge the abilities of some of the quieter people on his team, who he said sometimes found it difficult to engage with others.
Smith said team members have been able to query AI models to better understand the feedback they're getting from clients. That, in turn, he said, has enabled introverted team members to become more confident and "start to have better human conversations with the people that they were originally having difficulty with."
Yet for all the help AI can give workers of all personality types, it can't do everything, said Schneider, from fileAI.
For now, a bot won't be a big help, he said, if he has to talk to an investor in person. He still needs those interpersonal skills.
"It can upskill me, and it can sort of give me the playbook, but at the end of the day, I'm going to be standing there, and I'm going to have to deliver," Schneider said.
