Published June 17, 2026
One of the most cited concerns regarding the development of artificial intelligence is the elimination of jobs. While AI will eliminate many jobs, AI will also create new jobs and transform existing ones. An important but often overlooked question is this: What new skills will be required to perform the jobs that AI creates and transforms? The IC² Institute has launched a research program to probe this question empirically and expertly.
A year ago, we interviewed doctors who are integrating AI systems into their workflow. A number of these doctors could imagine a future in which AI will perform many of the tasks historically performed by physicians. Still, our analysis of their use of AI identifies a range of new skills that suggests that AI will not replace doctors but, rather, redefine how they perform certain tasks such as note taking, differential diagnosis, and making treatment decisions.
Our research presents an AI-augmented clinical workflow and describes some of the emergent skills that doctors are developing such as managing ambient listening technologies, knowing when and how to responsibly deploy AI, and collaborating with generative AI in ways that deepen rather than diminish their expertise. Our findings are not unique to doctors and suggest that a new set of skills will emerge that will reinstate the primacy of human judgement, critical discernment, and ethical decision making in the face of increasingly capable but still limited machines.
In the coming months, we will share updates from new projects we are launching with our partners from Dell Medical School, Good Systems, and the Department of Design (College of Fine Arts). These collaborations include experiments, simulations, and design sprints to better understand and map the new skills, dispositions, and workflows that are remaking human agency in the era of human intelligence.
S. Craig Watkins,
Executive Director, IC² Institute