Episode transcript The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.
Hello everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas, and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. In the past few weeks, one question has shown up in almost every conversation I have had with project managers, sponsors, and executives. And it usually comes with a nickname: the $1 million question. What work can we do that AI cannot? And what makes our work uniquely human and irreplaceable? And I want to start with a confession. I tried hard to answer this question the traditional way, by making a list. Empathy, creativity, judgment, leadership. And every time I look at the list again, I want to start with a confession. I tried to answer this question the traditional way by making a list. Empathy, creativity, judgment, leadership. And every time I looked at the list again a few months later, it had shrunk. AI writes a communication plan better than many of us. It analyzes risks, summarizes contracts, proposes schedules, and it does that in seconds. If our strategy is to look for the tasks that the machine still cannot do, we are in a race. We are going to lose. Maybe not this year, but maybe in the next version. So, I started to look at the question from a different angle. Instead of asking what AI cannot do, I asked what AI does not have. And the answer is quite simple. AI does not want anything. Let's think about that for a second. The most powerful tool we have ever put inside a project has no interest at all in how the project ends. It doesn't want the bridge to be finished. It doesn't want the system to go live before the competitors. It isn't afraid of tomorrow's meeting with the sponsor. It doesn't feel embarrassed when the deadline passes and the client calls. It doesn't lose sleep. If the project fails, nothing happens to that system. And projects exist precisely because someone wants something: a hospital, a factory, a new product that changed the way people are working. Someone wanted it badly enough to ask for money, build a team, and take the risk of failing in public. Every project, at its root, is someone's desire turned into a schedule and a budget. And that is where the answer to the 1 million question is. What makes someone irreplaceable is not a skill. It's having something at stake. It's being the person who cares about which outcome happens and who pays the price when things go wrong. And let me give you a concrete example. When I worked on humanitarian projects at the UN, the decision to move the location of a clinic or a maternity clinic was never just a data analysis. The analysis, today's AI could do very well and probably unlimited times better than what we did at that time. But the decision was made by someone who was going to look that community in the eyes afterwards. And who was going to answer for it? That weight is not a flaw in the process. It's what makes the decision legitimate. This changed how we should use AI in the daily life of a project. Delegating analysis to AI is very smart. But delegating the desire is just impossible. When a sponsor asks, what does the AI recommend? The question we need to send back is: what do we want? Because a recommendation with nobody who wants it and nobody who will defend it doesn't move any project. I see this happening in steering committees. More and more reports are generated by AI, and they are very good. But in the rooms where nobody feels the project is theirs, decisions sit still, not for lack of information, but for lack of someone who wants it. And this applies to every person on the team, not only to the ones who lead. A team member who only executes what the tool suggests is easy to replace, because the tool already does that. But a team member who wants the client to walk away satisfied, who noticed that the AI answer is technically right, but will create a problem for operations. And who raises a hand and says so to everybody? That person is very hard to replace. The difference between the two is not technical knowledge. It's desire. It's wanting. So here is my provocation for all of you this week. Stop asking. What you do that AI cannot do. Ask what you are willing to answer for. Which outcome of your project do you want badly enough to put your name on it? If the answer comes fast, you already know why you are irreplaceable. But if the answer takes a while, the problem is not artificial intelligence. Let's think about that. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
