Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang issued a warning to the world’s workers in May 2025: “You’re not going to lose your job to an AI, you’re going to lose it to someone who uses AI.”
I bet he’s right. The future of work is not man versus machine, but (in part) man with machine versus man without. Augmentation will define that gap: machines not replacing us, but reshaping how we work, what we do, and what it feels like.
Augmentation doesn’t eliminate jobs; it changes them. AI automates what can be codified and frees humans to do what only humans can. The effect is less like replacement and more like amplification, as though we’ve all been paired with the smartest teammate we’ve ever had—the one who never tires, never forgets, and always makes everyone else better.
The evidence is everywhere. Office software drafts emails, cleans up prose, and summarizes meetings. Lawyers use AI to generate first-pass contracts or scan thousands of precedents in seconds, freeing time for argument and client counsel. Doctors rely on systems that triage scans or draft reports while they focus on patients. Farmers fly drones and use sensors that diagnose crops in real time, turning hours of inspection into minutes of targeted care. Coaches analyze athletes’ movements in slow motion with AI, offering feedback at a level that once required a team of specialists. Full automation in these fields is prohibitively complex. But augmentation gives people sharper tools for judgment, creativity, and presence.
This isn’t the first time tools have shifted the boundary between human effort and machine support. The calculator made higher-order math accessible at scale. The spreadsheet transformed finance forever. Google rewired how knowledge workers solve problems. Each collapsed the cost of certain tasks to nearly zero, while elevating the value of human oversight and interpretation. Mathematicians, accountants, and research librarians still had vital roles to play. AI fits that lineage—the difference is speed and scope. It is leaping from calculating to reasoning, from narrow tools to general-purpose collaboration in years, not decades.
The economic stakes are staggering. Globally, OECD estimates that, today, 27% of jobs in developed economies have “high potential” for augmentation, with healthcare, education, and logistics leading the list. Accenture calculates that more than $10 trillion in additional economic value could be unlocked by 2038 through scaled, responsible adoption of generative AI, much of it driven by augmentation rather than replacement. This feels conservative.
It will not always feel liberating. For many, augmentation will feel like acceleration: an endless pressure to do more, faster. It will blur the line between work and non-work. It will raise expectations. In the wrong hands, it could become a tool for surveillance and micromanagement. The challenge for organizations is not just adopting AI but implementing it in ways that build trust rather than corrode it.
To do this, organizations must focus as much on culture as technology. 95% of employees see value in working with AI, but far fewer believe their leaders will implement it in ways that ensure positive outcomes for everyone. The most important choice will be how AI is integrated. Companies that treat augmentation only as a path to efficiency will alienate workers. The ones that thrive will be those that use it to elevate human contribution, redesign workflows, and give people the freedom to focus on what only they can do. That requires more than investment in technology—it requires leadership that prizes adaptability, experimentation, and shared benefit. Technology won’t define the future of work. Leadership will.
The people who will thrive will be those willing to adapt their practices, experiment with new ways of working, and abandon habits that no longer serve them. I call this behavioral adaptability.
For individuals, I have some counterintuitive advice: “upskilling” is overrated. Success won’t depend on learning the mechanics of AI. The tools will be self-evident, they’ll change constantly, and they’ll change too rapidly to make technical mastery a differentiator. The people who will thrive will be those willing to adapt their practices, experiment with new ways of working, and abandon habits that no longer serve them.
I call this behavioral adaptability: the capacity to alter one’s practices and habits in response to changing conditions. Unlike technical skills, which expire, behavioral adaptability endures because it reflects a disposition toward flexibility, experimentation, and unlearning.
In the next decade, behavioral adaptability will be the highest-value quality in the workforce. The individuals and companies that cultivate it will not only keep pace with change, they’ll set the pace of change. Even with strong credentials or resources, those who resist will be left behind. In the age of AI, behavioral adaptability will become the true currency of work.
New work
Automation is eliminating jobs. Augmentation is reshaping today’s jobs. But every major technological leap has created forms of labor that would have been unrecognizable beforehand. AI will be no different. New work is what comes next.
Some of that new work will actually look like a return to old work. As machines absorb the transactional and computational, demand will rise for what only humans can provide: qualities like presence, care, artistry, and experience. Coaching, teaching, caregiving, counseling, and artistic performance will grow in value. So will the work of craftspeople, physical therapists, and chefs. In an age where abundance makes everything synthetic, a hand-made meal or a live performance will carry a premium. There will be cultural hunger for authenticity, and these roles will not be marginal. They will be central. AI will make things cheap and it will make people precious.
Our jobs will also head outward, toward the frontiers of science and exploration. AI will accelerate breakthroughs in climate adaptation and geoengineering, synthetic biology, quantum and fusion research, immersive education, even interplanetary logistics. It will expand the human project into domains once reserved for science fiction, and create new ones.
Much of the new work ahead will be impossible to imagine until it arrives.
The reality is though, much of the new work ahead will be impossible to imagine until it arrives. It’s easy enough to point out that in an AI economy, the value of human-centric work will rise, but it’s impossible to tell you what jobs that don’t yet exist, will. It’s an unsatisfying answer, people hate when I give it to them, but it’s the one history has proven true over and over again. A century ago, no one could have predicted jobs like cybersecurity analyst or cloud architect, let alone flight attendant. Yet today, digital work defines vast portions of the global economy. The same will happen again. Entire categories of work will appear that we cannot yet name but that will feel indispensable to the next generation.
Work has always been more than economic output. It is the scaffolding of culture and identity. As the definition of valuable work changes, so will our sense of status, belonging, and a life well lived. AI will not end work. It will expand it, pushing us toward new ways of creating, connecting, and adding value that are invisible to us today.
This article How “new work” will actually take shape in the age of AI is featured on Big Think.