The Future of Work and Human-AI Collaboration: Will AI Replace or Enhance Human Potential?
What does the future of work look like in 10 or 20 years? How will humans and machines collaborate? Will AI replace human roles, or are there fundamental human capabilities that AI cannot replicate? Looking ahead, what possibilities will the future hold for European companies?
In a recent thought-provoking podcast by Maria 01, a panel of AI startup founders delved into these questions, exploring AI’s impact on human capabilities and potential future paths.
The panel featured Lauri Paloheimo, Co-Founder & Head of Change at Pandatron; Chris Petrie, CEO & Co-Founder at Kwizie; and Jaakko Kaikuluoma, CEO & Co-founder at Teamspective. The discussion began by listening to a future scenario—a research-based yet fictional story describing a potential future state. You can find the story and the company introductions at the end of this post.
How Can Humans and Machines Collaborate? What Human Capabilities Can AI Not Replicate?
Generative AI assistants, powered by Large Language Models (LLM), can significantly enhance the efficiency of professionals across various sectors. While they can aid individuals with lower-level skills in performing their tasks, their adoption may also reduce the number of entry-level positions. As employees become more efficient and automation and multi-purpose robotics evolve, companies may reduce their workforce. Many roles are likely to disappear, though new ones will also emerge. The rapid transition may create significant unemployment, particularly among less educated or less digitally oriented populations. Future advancements, such as neuro-links, may enable AI to respond directly to human thought, allowing for seamless human-machine interaction.
AI is already enhancing workflows in repetitive tasks like email responses or translations, and even creative fields such as art and writing. Creativity, once seen as a distinctively human attribute, was taken over by machines “overnight.” What, then, are the capabilities that AI could never replicate?
While many consider empathy and collaboration to be inherently human, Jaakko Kaikuluoma suggested that AI could actually bolster these skills: “Empathy, collaboration, and teamwork are areas in which AI can develop and augment human capabilities. Machines can actually do a better job than many humans can. For example, AI can impersonate a person going through different things, kind of acting out different scenarios with me. And it can help develop relationships between people. We do this already now by suggesting some very well-thought-out one-on-one discussion points using AI based on a team’s data, for instance. However, I want to challenge the idea that AI could replace the need for human-to-human connection. I think that’s one of the things that is extremely hard to replace.”
Chris Petrie pointed out that empathy requires human interaction: “We’ll always desire that human-to-human interaction for these kind of inherently human traits like empathy.”
Lauri Paloheimo added, “Another unreplicable human attribute is desire. Machines don’t want anything, and therefore they can’t make valuations or decisions either. They can just spin language from different perspectives, based on some statistical models at infinitum. They only have goals imposed by us and decided by us. But AI can make up for human shortcomings.”
Sarita Runeberg said that she had asked ChatGPT what it knows about her, and the answers had been surprisingly insightful: “I use chatGPT daily; it can process data that I’ve given to it, coming up with summaries of who I am as a person or how do I work as a leader.”
AI can support decision-making but cannot substitute the need for human judgment, autonomy, and control. Therefore, people will always need to say the last word—to give the command. At least that would seem like an optimistic future vision.
Jaakko continued, “I don’t think many people will want to outsource their decisions, but AI can certainly help understand some pieces of information and puzzle them together. It can help develop relationships between people, increasing the feeling of belonging and connection. Additionally, AI-based training can significantly enhance skills and competency. And AI can have a lot more patience than a human teacher. I don’t know if you have parents who struggle with technology, but I certainly don’t have an infinite amount of energy to provide that guidance all over again.”
As AI helps leaders in decision-making, enabling them to reflect on their decisions, question their beliefs, identify their biases, and contemplate how their decisions relate to their value system, it eventually affects the whole organization as others start mimicking the leaders. Lauri explained that this puts startups in a hugely responsible position: “If these technologies fundamentally shape what it means to be human, then what kind of behaviours should these technologies enable?”
“And how does the technology impact the way we think, do, and see things?” asked Chris.
Is There an Urgent Need for Retraining and Upskilling to Stay Professionally Relevant in the Future?
AI assistants and virtual learning environments hold vast potential for lifelong learning. New AI skills become essential, and the need for retraining and upskilling is urgent. If a 4-day workweek and universal basic income were introduced to distribute the remaining work more evenly, they would allow people to spend more time on self-improvement. Beyond technical skills, softer skills and adaptability will be crucial.
Lauri commented that many organizations take a limited view on upskilling: “The faster the change becomes, the faster any solution we come up with becomes outdated. Therefore, we need to have this general capability, not only of adaptation—because adaptation is reacting to your environment and finding equilibrium within it—but also creativity, meaning trying out new things and seeing which of them fits the environment best.”
Individuals and organizations must not only embrace AI tools to stay relevant but also keep an open mind to various possible futures. Chris agreed that the disruption would be vast. Leading an AI startup, he feels relatively aware of what’s happening but still admitted: “I don’t feel like I’m completely at the forefront of advancements. I think the vast majority of humans in Western societies and elsewhere feel the same way—this kind of sense of unease.”
Sarita echoed this concern: “That worries me as well: how do we keep everyone along in the future, in the sense that we have older people, people with less interest or fewer skills in AI, and how do we ensure that they are all included in the long run? We also need to educate the younger generations to understand what is real and what is generated by AI.”
AI can feel daunting, making some people hesitant to try it. People can also react very strongly when seeing AI-created content. As Chris noted: “I think social media is fundamentally changing now with so much AI content being streamed that people start to switch off.”
Could AI duplicates solve a range of issues, from time management to knowledge dissemination?
Highly skilled individuals, such as experts or business leaders, could create AI twins that possess the same knowledge as their human counterparts. For instance, a professor’s AI twin could help teach and mentor a larger number of students, disseminating knowledge efficiently. Would busy startup founders be interested in getting help from an AI twin?
Chris admitted that he would struggle to trust it completely. “I think that’s where the bottleneck for me is. Humans, at the end of the day, need to adapt to learn to use these tools.”
Lauri humorously added: “If it were an accurate copy, it might try to delegate tasks back to me, replicating my flaws! I’m not looking to work with people like me anyway; I want people to compensate for what I am.”
“But could I make a digital twin of my assistants?” he continued with a grin.
Will Tech Giants Continue to Grow in Influence, and How Can European Companies Compete?
The increasing dependence on AI technology amplifies the power of tech giants. Large multinational companies can leverage AI and robots for global operations, managing AI remotely and leaving only a few tasks to local teams. Recognizing the need for regulation, governments may enforce the division of these tech giants into smaller, separate entities. This, coupled with growing deglobalization and governmental support, might open new opportunities for European companies.
“The most plausible scenario where I see the breaking down happening would be related to geopolitical reasons,” commented Lauri. He added, “If this trend of deglobalization continues, where governments build incentive structures that favour certain AIs and constrain others, we might see significant changes.”
Jaakko acknowledged the difficulty of competing outside the US in building AI models. “They are so far ahead and can invest billions. But there are still many opportunities in the AI space, especially in this third wave, which is the application layer of AI. So, that competition is still very much ongoing. And that’s the opportunity that most European startups have now, I would say.”
“Lots of cool new businesses will emerge shortly. Many of them are still operating a little bit under the radar right now” added Lauri.
Looking Ahead: What Kind of Public Discussion Is Needed?
Investing in R&D and supporting prominent European startups is crucial, but there’s a larger need for societal conversations around values and directions for emerging technology.
“Instead of just focusing on regulatory questions at the EU level, there should be a significant citizen-level discussion on the futures we want and the values we want to cultivate,” said Lauri.
Involving more people from diverse backgrounds in these discussions is exactly why we, at Maria 01, created the Future Tales podcast and blog series. By exploring possible futures, we expand our futures consciousness—the ability to understand, anticipate, and engage with potential futures. This mindset empowers us to see our role in creating change and prepare for what lies ahead.
If AI increasingly integrates into deeply human processes and interactions—such as empathy, creativity, and collaboration—a meaningful dialogue on values will become essential.
“What are the core missions for the futures we want to enforce?” asked Lauri, pointing to the mission economy concept by Mariana Mazzucato, a leading economist who advises policymakers worldwide on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth.
As Lauri concluded, that’s a discussion we should have started yesterday.
You can find the podcast, M01 Rocketeers, here.
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Here’s the scenario – the story from the future discussed in the podcast, followed by the panellists’ company introductions:
FUTURE TALES: MACHINE MENTORSHIP
Dear Citizens,
The era of unprecedented productivity and seemingly endless opportunities for retraining is drawing to a close. As your Prime Minister, it is my solemn duty to confront the reality of our situation and confess a profound failure: the Human Capabilities Retraining Program has been declared a complete disaster. Despite years of effort, the Ministry of Education has been unable to produce the AI duplicates of our finest minds—professors of humanity, creativity, and co-creation—the very disciplines that are now vital to our survival. Now, with no other choice, we must return to the old-world methods of human-conducted education. This regression will set our retraining targets back by years, perhaps decades.
In the early 2030s, we witnessed an extraordinary leap in productivity. But even this golden age had its roots in crisis. By the late 2020s, a catastrophic shortage of AI experts gripped the world, sparking a massive exodus of talent from Europe to the tech behemoths of America and China. Our continent faced an intellectual haemorrhage that threatened to drain the lifeblood of technological innovation. In response, the EU launched an audacious program: to create AI twins—exact digital replicas of our top minds in artificial intelligence and cutting-edge research. These AI twins disseminated their knowledge at a speed unimaginable to the human brain, solving the shortage of AI talent once and for all.
The results were spectacular. Europe ascended to an economic superpower, the new global hub of technology. AI-infused organizations streamlined operations so effectively that the demand for human labour plummeted. Unemployment surged, but we responded with progressive policies—the four-day workweek, universal basic income, and the unprecedented robot tax, which allayed societal unrest.
The productivity boom empowered corporations to take over much of the retraining process. As academia lost ground, the baton of knowledge transfer passed into corporate hands. The early successes of our Retraining Program were rooted in technical knowledge—an area where AI twins excelled. But as artificial intelligence evolved towards general intelligence, penetrating deeper into every facet of life, the cracks began to show. A shift was needed—from technical prowess to human-centred capabilities. Collaboration, co-creation, empathy—these were the pillars of the new world we envisioned. But try as we might, our AI twins could not grasp the soul of these concepts and were thus unable to teach them to their human students.
It is with great regret, dear citizens, that I stand before you today to admit what should have been obvious all along. Machines, no matter how advanced, will never replicate the depth of human emotion, creativity, and connection. And so, I must deliver this hard truth: the most essential skills, the ones that make us truly human, cannot be taught by machines. We have arrived at a crossroads where technology meets its limits. As we step back into the old world of human mentorship, we must remind ourselves of one simple fact—humanity was always meant to lead, not follow.
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