Christine Heckart is the founder and CEO of Xapa World, an AI-powered platform reshaping leadership development through bite-sized, gamified daily experiences to help humans build critical skills for a post-AI world.
A visionary leader with over three decades in the tech industry, Christine has created multiple market categories and is dedicated to democratizing leadership growth across all levels of an organization.
M.R. Rangaswami: From your seat in the industry, what’s left for humans in an AI world?
Christine Heckart: If you work with generative AI systems you know there is a LOT left for humans – especially those who can manage and collaborate with AI teammates. AI teammates are super helpful for tasks that are narrow, specific, repeatable and take precision (ie: reading Xrays) and/or where ‘generative’ is an asset not a liability (ie: story telling and creative writing). Generative systems don’t answer the same way twice, or know the difference between correct and incorrect. They give the illusion of thinking, but they don’t think.
The most recent METR report shows that AI makes coders 19% SLOWER, although the self-report that AI makes them 20% faster. And the most recent model reviews show that the AI is hallucinating 48-79% of the time – the more advanced models hallucinate more frequently.
Agents cannot make business decisions or prioritize what’s important. Agents give good results only if humans provide enough context, direction and framing. And agents don’t know when their answers are missing vital elements. In short, AI agents are great assistants, but humans are still responsible for the outcomes.
No court in the world lets us blame the AI if problems happen. Humans, in a post-AI world, still have full responsibility for the quality and ethics of outcomes. Humans need to manage, prioritize, judge, approve, and decide. Humans resolve conflict, understand context, bring empathy, and collaborate. The AI agents can help make many of outcomes easier, faster, and more creatively elevated, but the ‘elevation’ happens with the human-and-machine collaboration, not with a full outsource.
So what’s left for humans? Potentially, more meaningful work (fewer repetitive tasks), deeper connection to each other, the difficult decision-making and risk taking, and helping to delight customers in new and unexpected ways. This is a post-AI world that can benefit everyone.
M.R.: If we can train the AI Models, why can’t we train the humans?
Christine: The biggest problem within companies isn’t incorporating AI, or training the AI models, it’s the mindset shift in people. The goal of companies is to drive growth and revenues, reduce costs, increase innovation, and solve customer problems. The skills humans need to contribute to these outcomes are skills like critical thinking, problem solving, curiosity, listening, influence, courage, decision-making, adaptability, etc. etc. The AI’s can’t do this even with all the training in the world….they can support the humans who do so.
So why don’t we put even a small percentage of the time, money and energy into training the humans that we do into training the machines? I think it’s because it’s so difficult to do training at scale. Humans need more than ‘training’ – ie: more than cognitive understanding of a topic – we need people to build skill and muscle and then apply it in the context of a situation.
As machines code, diagnose, optimize, and write—what’s left for humans isn’t less important – it’s more.
Everyone is a manager with AI. Everyone needs good business judgment, empathy, resilience, ethical decision-making, curiosity, problem solving, decision making, and the confidence to set context and deal with ambiguity. These aren’t “soft skills.” They’re core competencies for navigating a world where change is constant and uncertainty is the norm. Few companies teach them.
Fortunately, new solutions – including my company, Xapa – are coming to market, using AI and gaming mechanics to help people not just learn, but practice and build real muscle.
M.R. What is your take on AI and job distruption? Are we overreacting or not reacting enough?
Christine: Have you EVER worked in a company or organization that said “we have too many people for the work we need to accomplish?” (I sure haven’t!)
Big companies and small companies always want more resources than they can afford. Not only that, demographically we know that most of the developed world faces a labor shortage in the next ten years. So AI seems like a fantastic solution at just the right time.
I think we’re underreacting to the AI disruption in all the wrong places. Everyone’s talking about job displacement—83 million roles lost, 69 million created. But the real disruption and transformation isn’t the technology, it’s the people. Most companies are trying to bolt AI into products and processes without addressing – and upgrading – the human operating system. That’s like putting a rocket engine on a go-kart and expecting it to fly.
“What does it take for humans to thrive alongside AI?” The answer isn’t more tools—it’s more trust, more adaptability, and better decision hygiene. The least replaceable skills in the future are the things the AI can’t do, and the things you can’t outsource even if they could.
AI is here to stay. The companies that win will be the ones that prepare their people—not just their systems—for change. Here’s a great ebook on leading transformational change, and AI is the ultimate in transformational change. You can find it at www.xapa.com or through this QR code:
