The growing use of AI tools in the workplace means more tasks will be automated, with many jobs poised to take the hit. What remains to be seen is how workers plan to respond to the potential threat of these new technologies.
“What do students and workers naturally gravitate towards when they feel their future jobs are at risk?” he asks Monica Gamez-Dzokicwho completed a postdoc at Kellogg and is now at Purdue University. Gamez-Dzokic, with me Mariam Kouhaki and Adam Waitzboth management and organization professors at Kellogg, set out to address this question in a series of studies.
Specifically, the researchers sought to explore what skills and job opportunities people might prioritize in a more automated world. They found that when people perceive automation and artificial intelligence as threats, they strategically shift towards prioritizing creativity in their careers.
This effect was consistent across a range of work-related scenarios.
“People highlight creative skills on job applications, choose more creative training in terms of additional education or courses, and also seem to prefer employers who have a creative culture, rather than an analytical one,” says Gamez-Djokic. “These technologies are changing the way people try to demonstrate their worth in the workplace.”
“Creativity is really such a sweet spot,” Kouhaki adds. “People think it will be useful in a world of automation and artificial intelligence, and also that it’s less replaceable than those technologies.”
Betting on creativity
The researchers began by exploring how people believed the increasing presence of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence would affect work-related skills. They looked at technical skills (such as data analysis and programming), social skills (such as negotiation and communication), and creative skills that emphasize generating new and useful ideas (such as innovation and imagination).
In a pilot study of 194 participants, most believed that automation is more likely to replace basic technical skills than creative skills, and that automation would increase the importance of jobs that require creative skills.
The researchers then investigated how people might respond to job threats created by new technology.
In one study, 295 participants were asked to imagine themselves as recent college graduates and read information about job market trends. Half read about competition with immigrants and foreign workers for jobs, while the other half read about competition with artificial intelligence and automation. They were then asked to choose 3 skills from a list of 12 to highlight in a cover letter. Participants who read about the threat of automation prioritized creative skills more than those who read about the threat of outsourcing.
A follow-up study confirmed that people exposed to information about automation tended to show more creative skills, even when they didn’t have a pre-made list of skills to refer to.
The researchers also wanted to see how humans might adapt their skills to a more automated world. In a pair of experiments, they found that students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields and graphic designers—both of whom read that they potentially had to compete with artificial intelligence and automation—were more likely to want additional training in creative rather than technical skills.
“When you start to bring all these skills together and ask people to choose between them, which they often have to do with limited time or resources, then they focus on creativity,” says Gamez-Djokic. “That seems to be the best bet.”
Another experiment showed that people who read about the threat of automation were more likely to prefer employers whose hiring materials emphasized a creative culture over an analytical one.
“When people are concerned about the future of their work, they will gravitate toward environments that offer the opportunity to perform work that feels distinctly human and therefore less replaceable by machines,” says Waytz. “A company that values creativity signals that experience.”
Clearly human?
But these studies were conducted before the general public became much more aware of the creative potential of large language models like ChatGPT in late 2022.
So the researchers conducted two additional experiments in 2023 to see how the rise in popularity of genetic AI might have changed people’s perceptions. They found that even after giving participants additional information about the generative AI’s ability to produce creative content, people still preferred to highlight their creative skills in their job applications and LinkedIn profiles.
While the findings point to the importance of creative skills, they don’t necessarily reflect what will actually happen in the workplace—just what people believe will happen and how those beliefs might change people’s behavior.
“We’re not claiming that creativity is objectively resistant to automation and that it will help you keep your job,” says Gamez-Djokic.
Humans may consistently prioritize creativity because they believe it is a distinctly human trait that cannot be adequately replicated by artificial intelligence, according to the authors. And given the uncertainty about what automation means for the future of work, people may feel that creativity will give them the edge they need to adapt to whatever change lies ahead.
“This is less about thinking you’re more creative because you’re competing with a machine and more about being strategically positioned in the job market,” says Gamez-Djokic.
The findings have implications for education and employers, as the needs and demands of students and workers in an increasingly automated world favor a greater focus on creativity.
“Schools, universities and companies will probably want to invest not only in technical training but in ways to develop creative skills such as problem solving, idea generation and thinking across the board,” says Gamez-Djokic. “Otherwise, there is a risk of a mismatch between what people are motivated to develop and what institutions actually offer.”
