When the AI Wave Hits, Where Will Human Skills Go? | Shangguan Commentary

One

Skillful, precise, and fluid—at the 48th WorldSkills Competition, young talents from around the world competed head-to-head across 64 skill events. After the first day of competition, the audience on site was already deeply impressed by the contestants' superb execution.

"As delicate and smooth as a precision machine"—in the past, this was undoubtedly high praise for a person's advanced skill. But over the past two years, artificial intelligence has developed rapidly, gradually penetrating into manufacturing, social services, office work, and other fields. A sense of anxiety has grown alongside technological progress, with voices saying "AI will replace human labor" and "traditional skills will eventually become obsolete" heard endlessly.

It cannot be denied that some repetitive, standardized basic positions have indeed been replaced by smart devices and algorithmic programs. Whether it is practitioners who have worked on the front lines for years or young people about to enter the workforce, it is hard to avoid confusion: in today's era of rapidly iterating AI, is it still necessary to spend years honing a skill? Does it still have irreplaceable core value?

The rapid development of AI is reshaping industry forms, restructuring occupational systems, and overturning many criteria for evaluating the value of traditional skills. Reexamining and scientifically reassessing the unique value of human skills is not only a practical need to respond to widespread public confusion, but also an inevitable choice for adapting to industrial change and the development of the times.

At the WorldSkills Conference held concurrently with the WorldSkills Competition, many guests from home and abroad are exchanging views and discussing this important topic. For society as a whole, this is also an excellent opportunity to reach consensus: only after witnessing the charm of skills with our own eyes can we once again face the value of skills squarely and think about and answer this question of the era—AI and human skills.

Two

First, it must be made clear that AI's positioning has always been that of a "tool." It emerged to liberate human labor, not to replace humanity.

Human history has already seen three industrial revolutions—from the steam engine to the internal combustion engine to the computer. All of them effectively made up for human shortcomings, expanded the boundaries of production, and improved production efficiency, and today's rapidly developing AI is no exception.

As an unprecedented "super assistant," AI can undoubtedly help people complete work efficiently. A company in Shanghai that uses AI to design clothing has developed software that can increase design efficiency dozens or even hundreds of times. But from the initial spark of inspiration to the final determination of product details and quality, it is still the designer themselves. In other words, what AI presents is, in the final analysis, still the ideas in the designer's mind.

Industrial practice coincides with the view of Lu Ming, Distinguished Professor at Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. At this year's Bund Conference, he said that AI may replace some repetitive, standardizable skills, but human emotional intelligence, communication skills, and systems thinking remain irreplaceable competitive strengths.

In addition, AI's impact on the real world has boundaries, and there are still many tasks it cannot directly complete. The WorldSkills Competition has an event called "bricklaying"—in plain terms, "laying bricks." This is a traditional craft that humans mastered thousands of years ago; having passed through the steam, electric, and intelligent eras, it remains an indispensable skill in the construction field to this day.

It can thus be seen that people who master solid professional skills will not only avoid being replaced, but can instead become the "commanders" of AI. All of this is built on the knowledge and skills an individual possesses.

We can confidently draw the conclusion: skills still have irreplaceable value.

Three

Affirming the value of human skills in this era is not to deny the role of AI, still less to cling to traditional crafts and reject technological progress. On the contrary, actively embracing change and deepening human-machine collaboration is the key path to refining skills in the future.

In preparing for the WorldSkills Competition, many coaching teams introduced AI technology to help contestants improve their skill levels and complete tasks efficiently. AI has also appeared on the WorldSkills competition floor. In the eyes of some experts and coaches, future contestants will have to possess the ability to work collaboratively with AI.

What is truly eliminated by the development of the times is not skill, but rigid thinking and stagnant capabilities. Only by maintaining the passion and ability for lifelong learning is it possible to gain irreplaceable core competitiveness.

Lu Changyun, technical manager at the headquarters of Shanghai Xinghan Automobile Repair Service Co., Ltd., is a recipient of this year's National May 1 Labor Medal. The workshop where he works is different from the car repair shops people imagine—it is exceptionally neat, and the testing instruments in the technicians' hands all have digital displays and mechanical buttons. After new energy vehicles became widely popular, he, who came from a background of repairing fuel vehicles, immediately took the initiative to learn the internal structure and principles of new energy vehicles and quickly improved his own skills.

There is no unchanging technical ability in the world, and no professional skill that lasts forever once and for all. By maintaining the professional passion to actively improve, as Lu Changyun does, and actively adapting to new intelligent tools and mastering new technical methods, one can secure a place in any era.

This principle applies to all eras and to millions upon millions of ordinary workers.

Four

Every disruptive technological breakthrough in human history, while eliminating backward modes of production and old occupational positions, also gives rise to new industries, entirely new business forms, and cutting-edge skills. This is an objective law of social development and an inevitable trend of industrial upgrading.

But it must be faced squarely that the intensity of the change brought by AI is unprecedented. Occupational renewal and skill iteration that once took decades or even a century may now occur in just a few years or even months.

With the tide so turbulent, coping with it through individual effort alone is indeed difficult. Government departments need to take the initiative and actively break through. While fully affirming AI's positive value in liberating productive forces and empowering high-quality industrial development, they must also confront the real difficulties of employment transformation and job replacement and safeguard the foundation of social stability and development.

The employment issue in the AI era cannot simply be reduced to increases or decreases in jobs; rather, it is whether the speed of technological change can match the speed of people's learning and transformation. In other words, the direction of solving the problem is not to make AI "do a little less," but how to enable more people to "do more."

This year, Shanghai launched training and certification for AI promotion officers. Relying on a systematic training and certification system, it popularizes AI application skills among workers in all walks of life and improves the public's digital literacy and practical intelligent operation capabilities. As of the end of June, training and certification for 52,700 person-times of AI promotion officers had been completed.

This is a solution path worth exploring. By continuously improving vocational training, skill upgrading, and employment security systems, we can build a high-quality platform for the transformation of traditional skills and the cultivation of new skills. By responding to the changes of the times with proactive action, human craftsmanship can continue to radiate new value in the new era.