When Words Become Cheap, Communication Becomes Valuable

Part II – The Need for Good Communicators Is Here to Stay

I believe that there will always be situations where people have a need to hear from a human, where they require a human voice to facilitate trust and connection, something that AI will never be able to fully replace. This won’t necessarily be because humans communicate better, but because people want to hear from humans, not a machine.

In Part I, I discussed how the rise of AI-generated communication may paradoxically increase the value of human communication skills. As AI makes words cheaper and synthetic communication more abundant, there are already signs of growing demand for what I described as “an alternative marketplace” for interactions that are genuinely human. At the same time, as we increasingly outsource our everyday communication to AI, we will become less practiced at communicating for ourselves. The result will be a growing demand for authentic human connection alongside a shrinking supply of people capable of that very skill.

As AI strips routine communication out of human life, the human interactions that do remain will be disproportionately important.

Agents will be tasked with handling the majority of communication. Those agents will be trained to be efficient communicators and will be programmed with a wide range of capabilities. But the most consequential decisions will still require human involvement. And when finalizing big decisions, humans will still want to meet each other.

And when they do meet, they will have a high bar to live up to – to ensure they are not a complete disappointment following their agent’s work…

Those humans will still need to be on top of their game.

Though the quantity of human interactions may decrease for a lot of people (due to outsourcing to AI), the most important interactions will remain human-dominated. Those interactions will be ever more significant and the ability to communicate well in those instances will be even more important.

Therefore, the need for communication skills – namely the ability to listen well, empathetically gauge where another person is coming from, express ideas clearly, read a room, and navigate cultural and social nuance – will remain important.

In a world where linguistic and social barriers will feel like they exist less and less due to the prominence of virtual translation tools and additional technology designed to decrease the friction between people – the premium on those who can successfully engage without those tools will go up.

Won’t AI make communication skills obsolete, as GPS did to map-reading?

One could argue that communication skills will simply go the way of map-reading: “Who needs to read a map these days when any kid can just use Waze?” And there is some merit to the idea. Just as GPS removed much of the need for us to navigate for ourselves, AI could remove much of the need for us to navigate communication for ourselves.

But the simple fact is that humans are not maps. Reading a map is a one-way street, communication is (at minimum) a two-way street. Human communication involves emotion, linguistic nuance, the subtleties of body language and the differences in communication styles between cultures. A good communicator is a good listener and is responsive to the changes in the direction of the traffic.

Could AI help make human communication better?

Communication is certainly made easier by technology. For instance, video conference technology can have people holding a conversation when they each speak different languages but the technology has them hearing the other in their own language. In that example, technology helps to remove the language barrier. It can be used to remove all kinds of other barriers too.

But easier communication with fewer barriers doesn’t necessarily mean better communication.

Could AI actually be used not only to outsource human communication but also to enhance it?

Might AI be the solution to the need for humans to become better communicators?

The most valuable communicators of the AI age may not be those who reject AI, nor those who allow it to speak for them, but those who learn to use it to become better at speaking for themselves.

I’m excited by this possibility, and by efforts to use AI not as a substitute for human communication, but as a tool for improving it: helping people listen more carefully, communicate with greater empathy, understand how their words are received, and become more effective at expressing themselves.

Is the idea realistic? Can AI successfully coach humans to be better communicators?