AI founder says adaptable workers will have an edge as jobs change

Cognitiv CEO Jeremy Fain says young workers worried about AI-driven job losses should focus less on predicting which roles disappear and more on building skills that survive repeated shifts in technology. In a Fortune commentary published July 1, Fain argued that adaptability, communication and cross-disciplinary experience will carry more weight as AI lowers the cost of creating, analyzing and testing new ideas.

Fain, who co-founded the AI company Cognitiv in 2015, wrote that he has seen technology alter the economics of work before. His view is that cheaper tools tend to push companies to do more work in a category, rather than simply cut the people tied to it.

He pointed to spreadsheets and cloud computing as earlier examples. According to Fain, spreadsheets expanded the amount of financial analysis companies could do, while cheaper software development through cloud computing led businesses to build more software.

Fain said AI is likely to follow a similar pattern. As the cost of producing content, reviewing information and running experiments declines, he expects companies to expand those activities and create new kinds of jobs around them.

Lessons from early AI hiring

Fain said Cognitiv began hiring for AI-related positions before the field had a standard corporate structure. The company, he wrote, had no settled hiring guide for many roles, and some jobs changed while employees were already doing them.

Looking back, Fain said the strongest hires were people who could adjust quickly, learn new material, explain ideas clearly and remain effective when their responsibilities shifted. He described successful employees as people with more than one area of competence, including engineers with experience beyond coding and strategists who understood technology.

Fain argued that workers may weaken their position if they pursue narrow specialization alone. He said the durability of any single specialty is uncertain as AI systems improve and change the way tasks are performed.

As an example, Fain described a recent college graduate he mentored who studied both art and computer science. According to Fain, Tencent hired the graduate to work on League of Legends because the role drew on both creative and technical skills, while classmates who studied only computer science were having more trouble finding work.

Where human roles may hold up

Fain said AI will remove some jobs while creating others. He argued that roles built on trust, especially in enterprise and business-to-business sales, are less likely to be handed to AI soon.

In those jobs, Fain wrote, the work depends on relationships developed over time. He said customers rely on people who can respond when projects go wrong, timelines slip or problems need attention.

Fain said companies will keep looking for workers who can move between fields, solve problems in uncertain conditions and communicate well during change. He rejected the idea that those traits are secondary workplace skills, saying they grow more valuable over time in ways AI has not yet matched.

Fain is CEO and co-founder of Cognitiv. Fortune identified him as a former leader at Rubicon Project, now Magnite, CBS Interactive and the IAB, with a degree in electrical engineering from Yale and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.