Will AI take over the world, or at the very least, take your job?

With the rise of all manner of AI tools and agents, it is fair to ask how humans will compete against machine learning. Will all the degrees and job skills destined to be replaced by a computer? Is there anything we humans can do better than AI?

In his recent newsletter, author Daniel Pink wrote and shared a video about the Six Skills You Need to Survive AI. Pink is not an AI doomer, as he sees a future where people and AI collaborate in ways never before seen. To that end, he believes that there are specific skills and talents that humans have that AI cannot master. In the video, he shares six abilities that complement each other.

• Asking better questions
• Developing good taste
• Iterating relentlessly
• Composing pieces into something meaningful
• Allocating human and machine talent
• Acting with integrity

Let’s dive into the first one that he calls asking better questions. Pink points out in his video that AI is great at generating answers. In fact, it can provide dozens and dozens of potential answers to any inquiry. However, answers are worthless unless the questions are meaningful. It calls back to the old computer maxim of “garbage in, garbage out.” He believes that humans have the intrinsic ability to consider the meaning and objectives of a idea or problem in a way that computers simply are unable to do. To ask better questions, Pink suggests several starters, such as beginning inquiries with words such as, “What Does”, “What If”, “Why Not” and perhaps the most important question of all, “What are we trying to solve here?”

To strengthen your questioning skills, Pink suggests using a simple exercise known as The Five Whys. It is technique developed by Sakichi Toyoda for Toyota. The Lean Enterprise Institute has a good explanation of this approach.

5 Whys is the practice of asking why repeatedly whenever a problem is encountered in order to get beyond the obvious symptoms to discover the root cause. … Without repeatedly asking why, managers would simply replace the fuse or pump and the failure would recur. The specific number five is not the point. Rather it is to keep asking until the root cause is reached and eliminated.

I invite you to consider the recent questions you are asking at work, at school, or anywhere in your private life. What techniques can you use to improve the quality of your questions? Also, be very clear on the problem you are trying to solve when you ask them. By being very deliberate, the questions you ask today could lead to a groundbreaking insight tomorrow.

To learn more from Pink about the skill of asking better questions, along with the other five abilities, please see his video in the Pink Report.