Rethinking one's value in the workplace in AI era: Calvin Lo

As artificial intelligence reshapes the workplace, R.E. Lee International chief executive Calvin Lo believes the biggest disruption is not AI itself, but the way it is changing what organisations value—and ultimately, what they are willing to pay for.

Goldman Sachs estimates that artificial intelligence could affect as many as 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. In Hong Kong, recent surveys indicate that more than 70 per cent of companies have already adopted AI or are actively planning to integrate it into their operations. The figures have fuelled growing anxiety over layoffs, shrinking career prospects and whether entire occupations will eventually disappear.

Lo believes those concerns are understandable—but they are focused on the wrong problem.

"Everyone asks which jobs AI will replace," he says. "I think we're asking the wrong question. The bigger change is that AI is changing the economics of work. Once technology dramatically reduces the time, cost and effort needed to produce a good answer, organisations inevitably begin asking something else: what are we actually paying people for?"

According to Lo, every major technological revolution changes what the market values.

"The internet made information widely available. Smartphones made access instantaneous. AI is putting knowledge and execution within almost everyone's reach. Whenever technology makes something commonplace, the premium shifts elsewhere. That's why judgement is becoming more valuable."

"People often assume AI threatens jobs because it performs tasks. I think AI changes something more fundamental. It changes the value of the person performing those tasks."

For decades, technical expertise created a natural competitive advantage. Experience took years to accumulate, information was difficult to obtain, and producing a well-researched report or sophisticated analysis required time, specialised knowledge and sizeable teams.

Today, much of that foundation has shifted.

"Technology has become remarkably good at producing competent work," Lo says. "It can organise information, compare alternatives, draft reports and suggest recommendations in minutes. That's impressive. But organisations have never paid people simply to produce documents. They pay people to make decisions."

"AI can produce an answer. It cannot decide whether the answer is actually worth trusting."

The Market May Reprice Your Work Before It Replaces Your Job

Lo believes the greatest risk facing many employees is not redundancy, but irrelevance that arrives quietly.

"The first thing AI replaces may not be your job. It may be the reason your job justified its salary."

Across many industries, work that once took entire teams several days can now be completed by one person using AI in a single afternoon. Legal research, market summaries, presentation drafts and comparative reports have all become dramatically faster to produce.

"That's why I don't think AI will necessarily eliminate large numbers of positions overnight," Lo says. "What it does is compress the amount of human effort needed to produce the same outcome. And once that happens, organisations naturally begin reassessing how work is valued."

"You may still have the same title, go to the same office every morning and even feel busier than before. But one day the market quietly realises that the same result can now be achieved by fewer people, in less time and at lower cost. That isn't just AI at work. It's the market repricing human value."

"I don't believe experience is becoming obsolete. I believe the way experience creates value is changing. For many years, proving your value meant demonstrating what you knew. Today, knowledge is increasingly available to everyone, so organisations are asking a different question. Can you see what others don't? Can you recognise when the question itself is wrong? Can you make the right decision when the information is incomplete? The first thing that becomes outdated isn't necessarily your capability. It's the way you've always proved your capability."

"People think the future belongs to whoever gets the answers first. I think it belongs to whoever knows which answers deserve to be believed."

He illustrates the point with a simple example.

Two colleagues are asked to prepare the same report. Both use AI.

The first accepts the output, tidies the formatting and submits it.

The second spends another twenty minutes—not making the report longer, but checking its assumptions, verifying the data, asking whether AI solved the right problem rather than merely answering the question it was asked, and applying independent judgement before pressing 'send.'

"On the first day," Lo says, "both reports may look equally good. After six months, they won't."

"The competitive advantage isn't the extra twenty minutes. It's what those twenty minutes represent. They represent curiosity, scepticism and the willingness to challenge an answer instead of simply accepting it. Over time, those small decisions become your reputation."

Lo is keen to dispel the misconception that he is advocating less use of AI.

"If a tool can save me three hours of repetitive work, I absolutely want to use it. AI should gather data, compare alternatives, prepare the first draft and eliminate repetitive tasks that don't require human judgement. The mistake is assuming that because AI can complete the work, it should also complete the thinking."

For Lo, three responsibilities remain fundamentally human.

"The first is judgement—not analysing the problem, but determining whether you're solving the right problem in the first place. AI answers the question it is given. It rarely asks whether the question itself is wrong."

"The second is choice. Business decisions are rarely about identifying the mathematically optimal answer. They're about choosing between competing priorities. Every option creates different costs, different risks and different consequences. No algorithm can tell you what your organisation should value. Only leadership can."

"And finally, there's accountability. When reality changes, somebody has to recognise it. Somebody has to change direction. Somebody has to accept responsibility for the outcome. A machine can recommend. It cannot take responsibility."

If AI is repricing work, Lo argues, the real question for leaders is no longer how quickly they can deploy the technology. It is how they develop people whose value continues to rise alongside it.

Lo believes organisations need to think beyond AI adoption and begin investing in what he calls "Human Capital Resilience."

"Most companies talk about digital transformation. I think they should spend just as much time thinking about human transformation. Human Capital Resilience is an organisation's ability to continuously develop people's judgement, adaptability and decision-making as technology evolves. AI will keep getting better. The question is whether your people are growing just as quickly."

"Technology improves efficiency. Human Capital Resilience determines whether an organisation continues making good decisions when circumstances change. One builds capability. The other sustains long-term competitiveness."

"If every question is interpreted by AI, every recommendation is generated by AI and every decision is defended by saying, 'That's what the model suggested,' then eventually every organisation must answer one question: 'What exactly is the human contributing?'"

"AI will continue making answers cheaper. That only makes judgement, accountability and trust more valuable."

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓