Why LinkedIn’s CEO Thinks AI Will Enhance Employee Skills

In an interview with the Tool and Weapons podcast, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky said AI is automating routine tasks, arguing the technology could help enhance five core, human-centered skills.

Ryan outlined curiosity, courage, creativity, communication and compassion as five “soft skills” that AI could elevate.

“These turn out to be some really, really important skills to do your job well,” Ryan said. 

“The focus and emphasis on those, along with AI, is what I think gives us the opportunity to dream big and paint a much more positive picture that exists with humans and technology together moving forward.”

Speaking with CNBC, Ryan furthered this point, explaining that while AI can assist with execution and efficiency, it lacks the human instinct needed to question, connect and create meaning in complex situations.

He suggested these core skills will become more valuable as companies use AI to handle repetitive tasks.

“The people who are going to win are the ones who are asking better questions,” he said, adding that communication will play an instrumental role in the process, as “being able to clearly articulate ideas and bring others along” cannot be automated in the same way as technical tasks.

Reshaping employee responsibility

A new poll released by Quinnipiac University on 13 April found that 70% of Americans believed that advancements in AI will lead to an overall decrease in job opportunities.

In contrast to this, Ryan argued that AI will reshape how people imagine their jobs and will encourage employees to view their roles as a collection of tasks rather than a fixed title.

Those tasks, he says, can be separated into three categories: 

• Tasks that can be fully automated by AI
• Tasks that AI can augment
• Tasks that need human understanding – such as resolving conflict, persuading a team or setting strategies

“These skills, they're important, but they've historically been talked about as soft skills,” he said on the Weapons and Tools podcast. 

“In a professional world where people are actually much better at these skills and have really honed their craft on it, I think that it makes things a lot better.”

As AI takes on more responsibilities, Ryan added that agents could theoretically free up time for co-worker conversations, prioritising employee communication, judgment and emotional intelligence.

Finding balance with AI

While other industry figures are implementing AI in ways that could impact the workforce – such as OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla claiming that today's children won't need future jobs because of the technology or Anthropic’s Claude Code suggesting software engineers could be made obsolete by agentic coding – Ryan’s strategy is less radical in comparison.

LinkedIn Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman shared Ryan’s view that AI will enhance and not replace employees.

“Your job is changing on you, even if you aren't changing jobs,” Aneesh said in an interview with Marketwatch, going on to suggest that embracing AI is important but finding balance in the technology is key.

“If you're overusing AI, that means you're not doing anything unique as a human in that process, which means you're going to be even more afraid of AI taking your job,” he added.

While Ryan believes views like this are a positive way of looking at the rise of AI, he still remains aware of the technology’s potentially negative impacts.

“Sometimes when you're mired in technology, and especially with AI, and you kind of draw out where this could potentially go, it leads you to some dark places,” he said. 

“AI can generate possibilities based on patterns,” he added. “Humans decide which ones matter.”