People watching a drone light show over a lake with the words 5 Human Skills That Become More Valuable as AI Use Increases
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September 22, 2026

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5 Human Skills That Become More Valuable as AI Use Increases

Our Fourth of July fireworks were rained out and rescheduled for Labor Day weekend. The celebration included an incredible drone display moving over the lake. Watching the drones glide between one another while changing colors and forming three-dimensional images was mesmerizing.

As I watched, I couldn’t help but wonder whether AI would eventually replace the people who created shows like this. Then it dawned on me: The entire experience began with human ingenuity.

The human contribution was strategic, creative, and artistic. The technology was tactical, precise, and perfectly repeatable. Combining human imagination with machine precision created an unforgettable night.

Some people are afraid that AI will eventually take over everything we do. But that night, I realized that people become more valuable when they focus on the uniquely human contributions—not the repetitive, tactical ones.

When I was a kid, my mom wasn’t worried that the invention of the dishwasher might eliminate her nightly job of cleaning the dishes. She embraced the new technology and spent more time with our family.

Did she feel less valuable because she stopped washing the dishes?

Of course not. The dishwasher handled the repetitive task so she could spend more time on what mattered.

AI may reduce the value of repetitive or tactical tasks, but it will increase the value of the human skills needed to guide those tasks.

I believe learning to lead AI with the following five human skills will increase our value and create more opportunities for our future.

1. Creativity: Imagine What Could Be

AI can generate endless possibilities, but human creativity gives those possibilities direction, meaning, and purpose.

You can ask AI for 100 ideas and receive them in seconds, but more ideas do not automatically lead to a better idea. Someone still has to recognize an unmet need, ask an unexpected question, challenge an old assumption, or imagine an outcome that does not yet exist.

Creativity is more than producing content. It is seeing possibilities and connecting them to something that matters. We can do this through troubleshooting, combining unexpected ideas, or using sheer imagination.

Our experiences, frustrations, hopes, relationships, and sense of purpose influence what we create. AI can help us explore an idea, expand it, or examine it from different perspectives. But a human being must still decide what is worth creating and why it should exist.

As AI makes production easier, imagination with purpose will become more valuable.

2. Discernment: Decide What Should Be

AI can offer answers in seconds, but we still need humans to decide which ideas are true, useful, ethical, and worth pursuing.

AI does not remove the need to think. It increases it.

The faster we can generate information, recommendations, strategies, and content, the more important it becomes to evaluate them carefully. We must determine whether the information is accurate, whether the recommendation fits the situation, and whether the proposed action moves us toward our purpose.

We also need to consider who could benefit from a decision and who could be harmed by it. Something should not be done simply because technology has made it possible.

The question is no longer whether AI can produce an answer. The question is whether we have the wisdom to know what to do with it.

Discernment turns possibility into direction.

3. Communication: Make the Idea Clear

A powerful idea cannot create change until someone clarifies what matters, simplifies what is complex, and amplifies the right message.

AI allows us to produce more words than ever before, but that does not mean people have more time or attention to give us. Most are already overwhelmed by emails, messages, meetings, reports, posts, and presentations.

Adding more content to the noise is not the same as communicating.

Strong communicators help people understand what matters. They clarify their intention, simplify the message without weakening it, and adapt it for the people who need to hear it. They also confirm that the message was understood.

AI can help us organize, draft, and refine our words. Clear communication, however, still requires a human being who understands the purpose, the audience, and the desired outcome.

Clarity will become a competitive advantage in our noisy, AI-generated world.

4. Connection: Give People a Reason to Care

AI can simulate attention and empathy, but only people can build the trust that makes someone feel seen, heard, and valued.

Technology can help us remember a birthday, prepare for a conversation, or respond more quickly. It can recognize patterns in what someone says and even produce words that sound thoughtful and compassionate.

But words alone do not create a relationship.

Connection requires presence. It grows when we listen to understand, relate through shared experiences, and demonstrate that another person matters to us.

People do not want to feel processed by a system. They want to know that someone genuinely cares about them.

We should use AI to remove the clutter surrounding relationships, not to avoid the responsibility of having them.

As AI becomes more common, authentic human connection will become easier to recognize and harder to replace.

5. Collaboration: Turn the Idea Into Action

AI can assist every person on a team, but it still takes humans to align around a purpose, act together, and achieve something none of them could accomplish alone.

Equipping each team member with an AI assistant does not automatically make the team stronger. People can use excellent tools and still move in different directions, generate polished plans without building agreement, or work faster without working together.

Collaboration requires people to align around what they are trying to accomplish. They must understand their roles, take action, communicate through challenges, and remain accountable to one another.

AI can support that work by organizing information, identifying patterns, documenting decisions, and automating repetitive processes. But technology cannot create unity for us.

People must create the unity.

The greatest accomplishments will not come from technology working alone. They will come from people who know how to combine human strengths with technological capabilities.

Becoming More Human

These five skills create a natural progression. We use creativity to imagine what could be and discernment to decide what should be.

We use communication to make the idea clear and connection to give people a reason to care. Then we use collaboration to turn the idea into action.

AI can support every part of that process, but it should remain an assistant. It should not become the source of our purpose, judgment, relationships, or responsibility.

The goal is to develop the qualities that allow us to use powerful technology wisely. Instead of asking only what AI can do, we must also ask what kind of people we need to become.

While AI may help us do more, these five skills help us become more.

When we learn to guide AI rather than surrender our judgment to it, we can use its power to pursue the goals we choose—not the ones technology chooses for us.

About CJ Powers

CJ Powers is a filmmaker, author, communication strategist, executive speaking coach, and AI consultant. He helps leaders use AI effectively while strengthening the human skills technology cannot replace.

Copyright © 2026 by CJ Powers

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July 20, 2026

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Why My Phone Hides Everything but Fitness Apps at the Gym

How AI helped me create an automatic Gym Focus—and reclaim my attention.

This morning, I got into my SUV, and my navigation app offered a route to the gym. It knew my habits.

When I pulled into the gym parking lot, my phone notified me that it was time to focus on exercising. Nearly every app page on my iPhone disappeared, leaving me with only one page of exercise apps.

When I finished my workout and left the parking lot, my phone revealed all my app pages. My focused gym time had ended.

I don’t need to remember to turn anything on. I don’t have to reorganize my phone before every workout. The change happens automatically because I used AI to help me build a location-triggered Gym Focus.

But the most important part of this story isn’t what AI did.

It’s the decision I made before asking AI to do anything.

The Observation

Working out is a priority for me—but priorities need support from our environment.

I’ve noticed that our phones treat every part of our lives as if it belongs on the same screen.

Work apps sit next to entertainment apps. Fitness apps compete with email, social media, news, shopping, and games. Every time we unlock our phones, hundreds of options ask for our attention.

And unless we intervene, everything is presented with roughly the same level of importance.

While many of my apps play an important role at some point in my life, most aren’t useful at every moment.

When I enter the gym, I don’t need my entire digital life displayed in front of me. Nor do I want to be overwhelmed by the vast number of apps on my phone. I only need a small set of tools to help me exercise.

That got me thinking. What if my phone could automatically adjust its priorities when mine changed?

The Real Problem

The problem surfaced at a pool party I attended yesterday. One guy complained about the number of minutes he spent searching for the right app. He said he went through this search a few dozen times each day.

The problem: every app was being given equal access to his attention.

We often blame ourselves for becoming distracted, but our phones are designed to keep presenting us with choices. Even if we open the phone with a clear purpose, a notification, an email badge, a news alert, or a familiar social-media icon can lead us somewhere else.

At the gym, that could mean interrupting a workout to check something that could have waited until I finished.

I didn’t need more discipline. I didn’t need to go without certain apps. I needed a better environment.

The Investigation

I looked into Apple’s Focus feature, which can do much more than silence notifications. It can also determine which Home Screen pages appear while a particular Focus is active.

A Focus can be scheduled to turn on at a specific time, when a certain app opens, or when you arrive at a specific location. Apple also allows related apps and widgets to be organized on a dedicated Home Screen page. Apple explains the Focus scheduling options here and the page-customization concept in its Home Screen guide.

The capability already existed. I simply didn’t know how to turn it into the experience I wanted.

So I asked AI for help.

AI had previously given me step-by-step instructions for building a Shortcut. On another project, it even wrote an AppleScript for me. For my gym setup, I explained the outcome I wanted and used AI to walk me through the necessary steps.

This is one of the most practical ways to use AI: not merely to provide an answer, but to translate an intention into a workable process.

The Framework: Group, Focus, and Trigger

AI becomes far more useful when we can clearly explain what we want or need. Using the example of my phone’s Gym Focus, I created three decision points to guide what I provide to AI:

  • Group: Which apps belong together for a particular activity?
  • Focus: Which app pages should appear—and which should disappear?
  • Trigger: What event should activate and deactivate that environment?

For my gym setup, the answers were simple:

  • My fitness apps belonged together on one page.
  • That page should be the only one visible during a workout.
  • Entering the gym parking lot should activate the Focus.
  • Leaving the parking lot should return the phone to normal.

Once I had made those human decisions, AI could help me handle the technical setup.

The Story

The real test came the next day when I drove to the gym, especially since I had forgotten that I had set up the automation.

I entered the parking lot, and my Gym Focus activated. The regular pages on my phone disappeared, leaving the page I had created for fitness.

My phone hadn’t become less powerful. It had become more appropriate for the moment.

After my workout, I got into the car and headed home. Once I left the location, the Gym Focus turned off, and all my regular app pages returned.

Nothing had been permanently deleted or rearranged. My phone had simply changed environments with me. And just in case, I had a button to override my automation if necessary.

The Gym Focus is a small automation, but it solves a very human problem: the difficulty of protecting our attention. You can bet I started thinking about other priorities that might need the same kind of automated protection.

The Practical AI Step

You, too, can use AI to build systems that protect your priorities. Start by writing down the different roles your phone plays in your life.

You might create groups such as:

  • Fitness
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Family time
  • Travel
  • Church or personal reflection
  • Evening relaxation

Next, decide which apps belong together on each activity page.

Then ask AI something like:

I use an iPhone and want to create a Focus for [activity]. I want only the Home Screen page containing [list of apps] to appear while the Focus is active. I want it to turn on when [trigger] happens and turn off when [ending condition] occurs. Give me current, step-by-step instructions. Ask me which iOS version I use if that affects the steps.

Depending on the task and the access you give it, AI may be able to help create part of the automation. In other situations, it will serve as a patient technical guide while you build it.

Either way, review the instructions before making changes and test the automation in a low-risk situation.

The Human Takeaway

AI didn’t decide that exercise mattered to me.

It didn’t decide which apps supported that goal or which distractions interfered with it. It didn’t decide that entering the gym parking lot should mark the transition into workout time.

I made those decisions.

AI helped translate them into a system.

That is the kind of relationship we should be building with technology: humans determine the priorities; AI helps remove the friction.

Your Challenge

Look at the apps on your phone and ask:

Which apps naturally belong together—and during which parts of my day should the other apps disappear?

Create one dedicated page. Choose one Focus. Select one conditional trigger, such as arriving at a location, opening an app, or reaching a certain time.

Then ask AI to help you build it. Don’t use AI simply to help you do more.

Use it to help you focus on what matters.

Copyright © 2026 by CJ Powers

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June 22, 2026

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The Housemaid: When the Movie Escapes the Book’s Moral Dilemma

Some ask, “Is the book or the movie better?”

My answer is simple: it depends on what you want the story to be.

Do you want a story about a woman wrestling with whether survival justifies using someone else as a weapon? Or do you want a story about women breaking free, breaking rules, and punishing the man who trapped them?

Freida McFadden’s book develops a moral dilemma. The movie delivers a revenge fantasy.

Both may satisfy an audience, but they do not tell the same story.

SPOILER ALERT—I’ll try to keep as many reveals off the table as possible, but some will surface because they are necessary to the points I discuss.

The Book: A Thriller with Moral Dilemma at Its Core

The book is a thriller that keeps you guessing from the start. You may even find yourself wanting to scream at Millie to get out of the house, NOW! Enzo confirms your suspicions early, which only makes your heart race faster as you read on.

But Andrew’s picture-perfect family, including his wife, Nina, and her daughter, Cece, will have you feeling relaxed just long enough to believe Millie might be safe working as their housemaid.

Until it’s too late.

The author explores one moral dilemma from several different angles. At first, it looks like each character is fighting a private battle. But as the book reaches its climax, it becomes clear that the story keeps circling the same question:

To keep our hands clean, can we leverage someone else to do the dirty work, or does that action automatically make us guilty?

Each major character faces that same dilemma from a different position. Millie faces it as the desperate outsider trying not to return to prison. Nina faces it as the trapped wife trying to escape with her daughter. Enzo faces it as the one person close enough to see the truth and brave enough to ask whether escape is enough if someone else is left behind.

Millie faces her moral dilemma in several ways throughout the story. She justifies lies to avoid losing her job and returning to prison. Midway through the story, she justifies believing the worst about Nina because it allows her to accept Andrew’s attention. By the end, she justifies locking Andrew away as the only way to survive being killed or sent back to prison.

Nina’s dilemma is even more complicated. About halfway through the book, we learn that she manipulated Millie, using her as bait to escape with Cece. Enzo later becomes Nina’s conscience, forcing her to see the harm she has done to Millie. He also forces her to recognize that, regardless of Millie’s past, Millie has inherent value.

By the end, Nina makes the moral choice. She is willing to sacrifice herself to spare Millie.

That is where the book becomes more than a thriller. It becomes a story about what people become when survival, revenge, guilt, and justice collide.

The Book: More Than Escaping Andrew

An astute reader can see what happens when people make life-changing decisions while in survival mode, desperate to surface.

Nina chose Millie because Millie had already proven she could kill when someone vulnerable was in danger. Nina believed that if Andrew revealed his true nature, Millie might do what Nina could not.

At the same time, Nina does not simply abandon Millie without resources. She gives her tools, opportunity, and a possible way out. But that does not erase the moral problem. Nina still places Millie in danger so Millie can become the weapon Nina needs.

This raises one of the book’s strongest questions:

Can desperate victims become morally compromised?

Andrew’s abuse has definitely compromised both Millie and Nina. This shows up in the way both women plan and act against him. But the author takes it further by showing both women eventually recognizing the disturbing irony of doing to Andrew what he had done to them.

Once out of immediate danger, both women begin to see clearly again and are willing to take responsibility for their actions. But several twists place them in a position for a second chance, which they quietly and thankfully accept.

The Movie: A Thriller About Women Getting Revenge

The movie keeps many of the book’s major pieces, but it changes the moral weight of the story.

Instead of letting the characters sit inside the consequences of their choices, the movie moves quickly toward release. The tension shifts from guilt to payback. The result is entertaining, but also simpler, cleaner, and less interested in confronting the human condition.

The book makes us wrestle with whether Nina was wrong to use Millie, whether Enzo was right to push Nina back into danger, and whether Millie crossed the line from survival into revenge.

The movie does not give those questions the same space.

By reducing Enzo’s role, the movie removes the character who most clearly acts as Nina’s conscience. In the book, Enzo forces Nina to confront what she has done. He reminds her that Millie is not disposable. In the movie, that moral pressure is shifted, softened, and sped up.

The movie also changes Millie’s final actions. In the book, Andrew’s fate is slower, darker, and more morally uncomfortable, forcing us to consider our own moral dilemmas. In the movie, Andrew’s punishment becomes more immediate and cinematic. That may work better on screen, but it also makes the ending easier to cheer.

The book leaves us disturbed.

The movie lets us applaud.

Copyright © 2026 by CJ Powers