The Human Side of AI: Why Speed Matters More Than You Think

Author

Charlene Li
October 27, 2025

Do you remember when ChatGPT first came out? It was November of 2022, and I started getting calls. 

People wanted to know if this chatbot would really transform the future of work. It felt like everything changed overnight.

A lot of people I talk to compare the ChatGPT moment to the dawn of the internet, and how it revolutionized the ways we work and connect. But today, I want to challenge that thinking:

AI is much, much more than just another technology wave. 

It's a tsunami moving at a speed we've never experienced before. 

And if we underestimate it, the possibility of being left behind is very real.

The Speed Problem We're Not Addressing

When the internet arrived, adoption was slow. Organizations had time to adapt, reskill, and manage transitions through natural attrition. If you had employees whose roles were changing, you could wait for retirements, create new positions gradually, and let people adjust over the years.

AI doesn't give us that luxury.

You can implement a generative AI system in months. The impact on your organization is massive and immediate. And suddenly, jobs aren't gradually evolving… they're fundamentally different or gone entirely. 

We can't manage this through attrition alone. Time is at a premium, and AI adoption is critical.

The Two Paths Forward (And Why Both Matter)

In doing the research for our upcoming book, “Winning with AI”, my co-author Katia Walsh and I are seeing two types of companies emerge:

🤩 The Optimists are excited about AI creating new opportunities. They're right; there will be creative new roles, innovative ways of working, and jobs we haven't even imagined yet. Companies are already working to transform into specialized problem-solving teams, bringing human skills to the next level with AI support. 

🤔 The Realists are asking harder questions: What about the people who don't want to be reskilled? What about roles that simply won't exist anymore? What's our responsibility as leaders when technology eliminates positions faster than we can create new ones?

Here's the truth: these aren't two separate conversations. They're parallel realities we need to address simultaneously.

What Responsible Leadership Actually Looks Like

Being ethical about AI adoption means looking directly at the uncomfortable parts instead of glossing over them with "AI will create more jobs than it eliminates" platitudes.

Yes, technology has always changed work. Yes, we've survived industrial revolutions before. But we've never faced one that could reshape entire departments in quarters instead of decades.

As leaders, we need to:

🔹 Plan ahead, not react later. If you're implementing AI that will impact jobs, you need a people strategy before you have a technology strategy. Not after.

🔹 Be honest about what "reskilling" really means. Not everyone wants to learn new skills. Not every role has a clear evolution path. Some transitions will be hard, and some won't work out. Acknowledge that.

🔹 Consider the full human impact. This isn't just about headcount and budgets. It's about people's livelihoods, identities, and sense of purpose. The speed of AI adoption means we're compressing what used to be career-long transitions into months.

Here’s an example. One leader at a bank explained that they have 70 people who review handwritten checks. With new AI systems, they will only need five people for that job in the near future. What happens to those other 65 people? Some will be able to reskill. But many others have had the same job for decades and have little desire to do something completely different. This is the very human reality that we need to prepare for as leaders.

The Question That Defines Us

So many leaders are asking "How can AI make us more efficient?"

Instead, try this:

"How do we implement AI in a way that honors the dignity of everyone affected?"

This isn't a soft question. It's the hardest one you'll face.

Those 65 check reviewers at the bank? They're real people with mortgages, with pride in their work, with identities built over decades. When we talk about "managing transitions," we're really talking about asking people to grieve the loss of how they've defined themselves, while simultaneously pivoting to something entirely new—all at a speed that's unprecedented in human history.

The business case matters, of course. Organizations that ignore human dignity don't just face ethical failures—they face resistance, quiet sabotage, and AI initiatives that never gain traction. But that's not why we should care.

We should care because leadership is ultimately about stewardship. Not just of profits and productivity, but of the people who trusted us enough to build their lives around the organizations we lead.

A challenge to consider: Before your next AI implementation decision, ask yourself: If this were my parent, my sibling, my child whose role was being eliminated—would I be proud of how we're handling this?

Then ask: What would need to change about our approach for the answer to be yes?

That's where your real AI strategy begins.

💭 Your Turn

This has been happening across sectors for centuries, but never at this speed. We don't have the luxury of pretending the human challenges will work themselves out over time.

What's your plan for the people whose jobs will change because of AI? And I mean a real plan, not a hope that it'll somehow sort itself out.

The technology is ready. The question is: are you ready for the human side of this transformation?

What I Can’t Stop Talking About

  • AI-fluent employees are commanding an $18,000 salary premium on average. Leaders can retain skilled employees by creating an environment of mutual investment and support. 

  • LLM, RAG, and RLHF, oh my! AI jargon is evolving as fast as the technology itself, and understanding what you’re working with is critical. Here’s my key to decoding the terms you’ve probably already heard … but not understood.

 Recent Podcast Appearances

  • I had a great conversation with host Lukas N.P. Egger last week on the Process Transformers Podcast from SAP Signavio. We dug deeper into the importance of speed in AI adoption in the episode “How to Know You’re Winning with AI”. Listen here. 

  • Last month, I appeared on the DEX Show, talking about how to take your AI pilots to the next level. Have a listen!

 My Upcoming Appearances/Travel

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