Artificial intelligence is likely to enhance, rather than replace, human workers, according to a new study from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The research, titled “The EPOCH of AI: Human-Machine Complementarities at Work,” offers a framework to evaluate tasks across various occupations, identifying areas where human skills remain crucial alongside technological advancements.
“There tends to be a prevailing narrative that robots are coming for jobs,” said Roberto Rigobon, professor of management at MIT Sloan. “We think it’s important to ask different questions — looking more at human capabilities than AI capabilities and shifting toward what technology can give us rather than what it might take away.”
The study identifies human strengths using an EPOCH index, which measures five core capabilities: Empathy, Presence, Opinion, Creativity, and Hope. It also uses metrics to assess risks of substitution and potential for augmentation by AI.
According to the findings, human-intensive tasks, such as recruitment, training, and technical goal-setting, have increased significantly between 2016 and 2024. Newly added job tasks in 2024 showed notably higher levels of EPOCH capabilities compared to tasks that had been phased out.
Jobs involving high EPOCH skills include emergency management directors, psychologists, childcare providers, public relations specialists, and film directors.
“A ‘hard’ skill, like solving a math problem, is comparatively easy to teach,” said Rigobon. “It is much harder to teach critical human skills—such as hope, empathy, and creativity.”
The researchers urge investment in developing these human-intensive capabilities, emphasizing their essential role alongside AI-driven advancements.
