We’re all about to be managers….
Insight: In an AI-abundant world, humanity becomes the scarcest and most valuable resource.
So what? Train your workforce on the skills AI can't replace: judgment and empathy.
History has a pattern: whatever becomes scarce becomes valuable. In the 1950s, information was hard to find, so encyclopedias were gold. In the 2000s, attention became the bottleneck, and social ads became a business model. By the 2010s, the biggest salaries went to data analysts, consultants, and coders.
Now AI is making all of that abundant. Research, analysis, synthesis — Claude can do it in seconds. So the question isn't whether AI will change work (it already is). It's what becomes valuable when AI handles the rest. It’s what skills matter the mosts for your transit workforce.
My answer: trust. Judgment. The wisdom that only comes from being wrong and finding your way back. AI can tell you what the data says, but it can't tell you how failure actually felt, or what it taught you about yourself. It can't inspire a room or steady a team when things fall apart. It can’t make decisions in ambiguity where real people are at stake.
In an AI world, the scarcest resource is our humanity — empathy, leadership, lived experience. Because when it matters, we put our trust in people who've walked the walk.
That's the bet I'm building KTS on. Not that AI will do everything, but that AI will make the human stuff matter more than ever.
So if you're thinking about AI training for your team, don't start with the tools. Start with the humans. Judgment, critical thinking, knowing when to trust the output and when to push back, active listening and patience — that's the real skill gap.
The technology is the easy part.
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