AI is not coming for your job, but your skill set
Notes from the FQ AI Summit, plus how I am using L.A.T.T.E. to design human-first learning in an agent era
Hi Resilient Leaders,
Yesterday, November 12, 2025, I spent the day at the FQ AI Summit in NYC listening to CMOs, CEOs, creatives, and technologists who are building the next era of AI at places like H&R Block, Mastercard, Ford, Cisco, AWS, Fitch, and more.
Under all the case studies and demos, three themes were loud and clear.
1. AI is not replacing humans, it is exposing gaps in skills
More than one leader said some version of this:
"AI is the taskmaster."
It can automate tasks, it cannot replace judgment, taste, or courage.
Michelle from Amazon Web Services shared that AWS has a Ready 2030 pledge to train over fifty million people in AI skills by the year 2030, backed by a two billion dollar investment. She also talked about Skill Builder, their free platform with labs, quests, and simulations so anyone can get hands-on practice, without risking production systems.
So while the headlines love the story about Amazon and others "replacing workers with AI," the executives on stage were talking about something very different.
They were hiring more people to train models, to design prompts, to govern agents, and to teach teams how to use these tools inside real work. One executive said she actually has more people working on AI than the other way around, because of the testing, training, and ongoing human review required.
The real divide is not AI versus humans. It is humans who are learning to work with AI, and humans who are hoping this wave will bypass their role.
2. Curiosity is the new entry ticket, not perfection
Across panels, leaders kept coming back to one idea: you cannot outsource your learning.
At Cisco, they are running internal programs like Team with AI and even an AI clue game where cross-functional teams solve a who-done-it using AI tools on real data. The point is not a perfect answer, the point is comfort, practice, and shared language.
Kaveri from DXC said something that stuck with me. She talked about "operationalizing curiosity," not as a cute slogan, but as a leadership responsibility. You are expected to get your hands dirty, try things, break a few workflows, then scale what works.
"When met with resistance, teach."
— Jeff Jones at H&R Block
They use that as a leadership rule for AI adoption inside their marketing organization. Resistance is not a sign to push harder, it is an invitation to educate.
That is a mindset shift most managers are not being trained for yet.
3. Agents are here, and they change who your real customer is
Several speakers made it plain that we are crossing a line.
One security leader shared that this year, more than half of internet traffic is already machine-based, not human. In the next decade that could reach around eighty percent.
That means agents talking to agents, models reading your pages, and automated systems making decisions before a human sees anything.
On the creative side, agency leaders and brand strategists walked through how they are already designing for a world where your AI assistant might be the first one to "see" a campaign, a product page, or a checkout flow.
So the question becomes:
What does it look like to design learning, leadership, and communication for humans, in a world where their first touchpoint might be an AI agent working on their behalf?
That is where my L.A.T.T.E. brain kicked in.
How I am thinking about all this through L.A.T.T.E.
Here is how I am processing the summit through my L.A.T.T.E. framework, and how it shapes the way I design scalable learning for managers in an AI agent era.
Look
What I saw in the room was not "AI will take your job." What I saw was executives treating AI tools like new hires that need onboarding, feedback, and guardrails. I also saw a deep concern about "cognitive atrophy" in younger strategists. Several speakers said it plainly. If you let AI think for you, your own strategic muscles will weaken.
Anticipate
In practical terms, that means anticipating:
- More work being done by agents talking to agents.
- A bigger gap between managers who can ask sharp questions of AI tools and managers who accept whatever output they get.
- Employees anxious about being replaced, while leaders are actually worried about whether anyone will learn to think deeply again.
So the question becomes: what skills will your managers need when the default workflow has AI in the middle.
Think
For me, the answer looks like this.
- Managers need to understand AI as a collaborator, not a black box.
- They need enough AI literacy to ask for better, not just faster.
- They need to hold the line on empathy, ethics, and taste, while still experimenting aggressively.
In other words, they have to protect the human core of the work while letting agents handle the repeatable tasks.
Talk
That means changing how we talk about AI inside teams.
Instead of "this tool is coming, deal with it," I heard leaders modeling language like:
"Let us treat this tool like a teammate we are training."
"Let us start with our values and wrap AI around them, not the other way around."
"Use AI to get to your first draft faster, then step away from your computer and think."
When I build learning programs for managers, I will be baking that into the scripts, the role plays, and the power phrases they practice. They need language that reduces fear and invites experimentation.
Evaluate
Finally, evaluate.
After an event like this, I ask:
- Where can AI truly free managers to coach, think, and build relationships.
- Where are we at risk of letting tools flatten our voice or our standards.
- What experiments can we run in thirty days that will give us real data on both.
That is how I will be using L.A.T.T.E. to shape next-generation learning experiences for managers who are leading in this AI agent era.
If you want to read through my raw notes from the FQ AI Summit, including more quotes, I dropped them into a Notion doc here:
Read my FQ AI Summit notesI will be turning pieces of this into concrete manager training over the next few months, and I will share what actually works as we test it.
Tomorrow, I'll be back in your inbox with roles from 8 companies who are hiring now.
Talk soon,
Jacqueline