Those most vulnerable to AI displacement are not the weakest technically, but may even turn out to be the strongest, according to one data leadership expert.
James Matthews, who has spent 25 years in banking and financial services, says those who have built their careers on technical brilliance may have never developed the commercial awareness and interpersonal skills that AI cannot replicate. And they are the most vulnerable.
“The people who are really technically strong but socially a bit weak are going to be challenged a lot by AI,” he said. “If they are relying on technical skills alone, AI will quite likely take them out.
“For business owners and senior leaders, the frustration is just as acute. They have invested in technical talent that struggles to translate its work into language the boardroom understands – or to ask the right questions before spending weeks solving the wrong problem. AI will not fix that gap. If anything, it will widen it.”
The scale of the challenge is significant. The World Economic Forum projects that 92 million jobs will be displaced globally by 2030, with 41 per cent of employers already planning workforce reductions in areas where AI can automate tasks.
There are a lot of people who can do really technically brilliant stuff – but they can’t communicate the value of that work
Research from Sigma Computing found that one in five business professionals report feeling judged by their own data teams due to a perceived lack of data knowledge.
“There are a lot of people who can do really technically brilliant stuff – but they can’t communicate the value of that work to the people they are working with, or establish what is really required beyond the high level request,” said Matthews. “They deliver something technically brilliant that does not solve the problem.”
The issue, he says, runs deeper than presentation skills. It is about understanding what a business actually needs – and having the confidence to ask the right questions to find out.
“A lot of the time, people will say they want to understand something simple – sales by channel, for example – when what they’re really after is sales by channel for new customers. The skill lies in being able to ask further questions in the right way to work out the actual brief. Understanding how this fits into the commercial picture may also mean they can add additional insights over and above those originally requested – delivering real value, and positioning themselves well for more senior roles.”
His perspective is rooted in a foundation built on a Computer Science and Business degree at university, and a career at KPMG – where his training focused on the benefits and risks that technology presents to business –something that exposed him to both worlds simultaneously. And his father’s work as a commercial accountant sharpened that commercial instinct, which is why he never saw technical delivery and business value as separate disciplines.
