Specialists are no longer required: versatilists are taking over the workplace from AI agents

The assumption that narrow expertise is a ticket into the labor market is collapsing fast. Kathy Pham, Workday's vice president of AI, told ZDNET that AI agents are already handling the less rewarding parts of the workday, and the people who stay relevant will be those who know how to run multiple agents across several domains at once. She calls such people polymaths. The automation of routine tasks, she argues, should free energy for higher-value areas.

Executives who spoke with ZDNET point to two critical traits: adaptability to the changes AI dictates, and the confidence to make decisions agents cannot. Chris Kairinos, senior director of modern workplace technologies at A+E Global Media, put it bluntly: “I don't think you need to master the technology, because I don't think there's a way to master it right now.” The technical components of work are shifting at a pace that feels nearly constant, so single-domain mastery is being replaced by the ability to work across the breadth.

Kairinos used the analogy of a piano that never stops changing: 30 extra keys appear, three additional keyboard layers, three more pedals. When the instrument itself keeps morphing, you cannot become a virtuoso in the classical sense; you can only stay flexible enough to keep playing. David Minahan, chief digital, data and technology officer at the UK charity Young Lives vs. Cancer, says that velocity demands a learning-and-development strategy that recognizes the need for polymathic capabilities.

Minahan draws a sharp distinction: “Generalists are too broad.” The term he has deliberately adopted is “versatilists” — people comfortable applying skills across many domains, for example in conversations with business stakeholders to identify high-value digital-transformation projects. His team is expected to work the full technology stack, and that is a deliberate choice: not generalists, but versatility. He says it also solves a long-standing IT problem where people get stuck in a single niche and struggle to move.

Ankur Anand, group CIO at recruitment firm Harvey Nash, sharpens the point: “the professionals advancing now are specialists whose expertise has been stretched to cover new areas, with AI's help, not people who have turned into generalists at everything.” The agents handle the repetitive and the routine; the human remains to extend their comparative advantage into the places the agent has not yet reached.