OpenAI recently published one of the clearest signals yet about which workplace skills may become most valuable in the AI era.
In a report on how its researchers use AI, the company shared data showing which tasks are being absorbed by AI and which still rely on people.
The biggest automation gains this year came in coding, technical support, monitoring computer runs, and analyzing results. By contrast, AI is still doing relatively little work deciding what projects to pursue, where to invest resources, or how to set priorities.
This offers a glimpse of where the value of work may shift.
Companies can measure whether code was written, products shipped, or bugs fixed, making those tasks easier to automate. Deciding what should be built in the first place is harder. It requires judgment, context, tradeoffs, and a willingness to take risks.
As OpenAI put it: “People still set our research priorities, judge which ideas and results to pursue, and decide whether to scale, pause, or deploy systems.”
In other words, the future of human work may shift away from execution and toward making the right decisions.
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