Most jobs still can’t be performed by AI alone

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence is changing the way we work. In fact, “roughly two-thirds” of jobs posted on Indeed require skills that AI could perform reasonably well, says the CEO of the job-search platform, Chris Hyams.

That doesn’t mean you should throw your hands up and prepare for AI bots to take your job, however: There are many roles AI isn’t capable of doing, and even more that it’ll never be equipped to do, Hyams says.

“We have 300 million plus job seekers coming to Indeed every month … and there’s a lot of anxiety [about whether] AI is going to help or hurt jobs,” Hyams tells CNBC Make It. Some of that concern is misplaced.

As of February 2025, there’s no job posting on Indeed that AI can do completely on its own, Hyams says.

“AI can do math very well. It can’t draw an IV very well,” he says. “You can’t have zero customer service reps [or] replace them with AI.”

Siemens CEO Roland Busch used nurses as an example in a recent interview with LinkedIn’s editor in chief, Dan Roth. Siemens has developed AI products that can handle some of the low-skill administrative and physical tasks that currently occupy a significant portion of the time nurses spend with patients, like writing documents and “pushing beds around,” Busch said.

“So you take this bed-pushing work away and [create more] productive time for a nurse,” he said. “You would not replace a person with a robot, but a piece of the work a person does.”

Terms related to generative AI — the content-creating technology behind increasingly popular chatbots like ChatGPT — only appear in about three out of every 1,000 listings, based on new research from the Indeed’s Hiring Lab. 

Still, as the world of work becomes more and more technologically advanced, it’s important for employees to hone the human or “soft” skills that artificial intelligence can’t replicate.

Strengths like empathy and compassion, decision making, teamwork and collaboration will remain highly valuable in the workplace for years to come, says Hyams. He values potential employees who possess “curiosity and adaptability,” he says.

“It’s funny, the more I do this, the less I’m looking for specific knowledge or experience,” says Hyams. Instead, he’s drawn to people who will become so passionately curious about a topic that they’ll fully devote their time and attention to learning more: “It’s just a question of, ‘What else can you fall in love with?'” he says.

It’s also worth building your emotional intelligence, which helps you understand and manage your own feelings and communicate effectively. Companies seek out employees who can take and apply constructive feedback, have critical conversations, effectively present ideas and manage conflict in the workplace, Terry Petzold, a recruiter of over 25 years, told CNBC Make It last year. 

“I’ll tell you where the future is,” he said. “It’s not even necessarily in [the] technology space. It’s in soft skills. It’s in emotional intelligence. … The general EQ skills we’re noticing really have to do with communication [with] others and the ability to push through challenges and come out unscathed.”

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