Organizations need to understand how individuals create value beyond the AI baseline in real organizational settings, particularly in higher-stakes professional work requiring judgment, domain expertise, and decision-ready outputs. KPMG and researchers from the University of Texas conducted a large-scale field study with 523 early-career professionals where participants completed business-specific tasks using an AI agent built for the domain. This research can help answer two questions: 1) What enables early career employees to add value in AI‑enabled workflows? And 2) how can those capabilities be intentionally developed in ways that sustain continuous improvement as AI continues to advance? The findings sorted participants into three groups: AI apprentices, AI delegators, and AI amplifiers. A surprise in the findings was that foundational skills such as critical thinking abilities, AI literacy, and domain knowledge weren’t clear signals for who fell into which group. This can help leaders rethink how to design entry-level work and how to hire for these jobs.

Research from management, cognitive science, and human-computer interaction indicates that users often accept AI-generated outputs uncritically, leading to cognitive offloading,…

In a survey of more than 600 employers, one theme kept coming up: Despite AI, soft skills and the ability to learn still set successful job candidates apart.