Google Cloud reveals two human abilities irreplaceable by AI

Vice President Customer Engineering Google Cloud Asia Pacific Moe Abdula has revealed two human abilities that will never be replaced by new technology, including artificial intelligence (AI). According to Moe, a number of basic human capabilities have never been supplanted despite various waves of technological development and are expected to remain relevant in the AI era. “I think there are human skills that will endure, and they have survived all past technological shifts. Our ability to have empathy and connection is something very human,” Moe said during an interview following a media briefing held by Google Cloud in Jakarta on Wednesday. He explained that the ability to understand emotions, sense the condition of others, and provide appropriate responses in social interactions is an aspect that technology will struggle to replace. As an example, Moe cited police officers who must interact directly with the public in various situations. According to him, a police officer’s ability to de-escalate tension, understand a person’s condition, and help the public make sound decisions requires reasoning and empathy that are human characteristics. “The skill of understanding how to defuse tension, comprehend a situation, and help someone understand what is right or wrong is very human,” he said. Moe believes these abilities are the reason why some professions will be difficult to impact or replace with AI, especially those requiring human reasoning and feeling. Besides empathy, Moe mentioned the human ability to continuously discover how things work and adapt to change as another advantage that AI does not possess. He explained that AI fundamentally operates based on data and instructions provided by humans, thus tending only to react to what it has learned. Conversely, humans have the ability to create new ways of doing things and constantly adapt to the times. Moe gave the example of how humans have continuously adapted to technological developments, from using animals as transportation to constantly developing new things until modern vehicles were eventually created. A similar phenomenon has occurred in education and the workplace, where manual arithmetic skills, once considered an indicator of intelligence, shifted after the advent of the calculator. According to him, humans did not stop at using this new technology but instead leveraged it to solve more complex problems. He assessed that the ability to adapt and utilise technology to create something new will be a crucial skill that needs continuous development in the AI era. “Humans keep finding new ways to work and utilise technology. That is a skill only humans possess,” Moe said.