That Meeting You Hate May Keep A.I. From Stealing Your Job

April 16, 2026

Faces

(NYT) – As artificial intelligence makes many tasks easier, the human work of cajoling, arm-twisting and reassuring appears to be rising in importance.

As A.I. makes the production of knowledge work more and more efficient, the job of presenting, debating, lobbying, arm-twisting, reassuring or just plain selling the work appears to be rising in importance. And the need for those sometimes messy human tasks may limit the number of people A.I. displaces.

“These were always important skills,” said David Deming, an economist who is the dean of Harvard College. “But as the information landscape becomes more saturated, the ability to tell a story out of it — to take a ton of text and turn it into something people want — is more valuable.” (Read More)