LinkedIn Says Five Human Skills Will Survive AI. The List Is More Surprising Than Expected

With more than a billion registered users, Ryan Roslansky’s platform gives him a firsthand look at how the labor market is changing in real time. He didn’t call a panel of futurists or commission a survey about what the market might look like in 2030 when he and Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn, sat down to determine the human skills they felt AI truly couldn’t replace. They spoke with talent leaders, behavioral economists, organizational psychologists, and neuroscientists. The outcome is a framework known as the 5Cs, and the list is more intriguing for what it contains than for what it excludes.
The five skills—curiosity, bravery, creativity, compassion, and communication—were highlighted in a March 31 CNBC article by Roslansky and Raman. They were taken from their recently released book, “Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI.” The framing is intentional: unlike when they are listed with technical competencies, these soft skills are not apologetically presented. In a time when AI is taking up an increasing amount of what knowledge workers used to do on a daily basis, they are portrayed as the true essence of what makes humans economically viable.

Curiosity is at the top of the list, and the logic is sound. According to Roslansky and Raman, AI creates possibilities from patterns, but humans determine which ones are significant and pose questions that defy the pattern. Jonas Salk’s question about whether dead viruses could teach the body to fight live ones serves as an appropriately specific example. In a professional setting, curiosity isn’t really about having an interest in things. When the data tells you to stop, it’s your natural tendency to pull on a thread. When a patient flinches during a discussion about something other than symptoms, the doctor will follow up. Because it necessitates understanding what you’re not looking for, that type of attention cannot be automated.

The argument here is structural, but courage is the one that is often written off as motivational. Risk can be calculated by AI. People are the only ones who determine whether a risk is worthwhile. When you’re the sales manager telling a client that their request isn’t correct and pointing them in the direction of something better, or when you’re the person in a meeting proposing a new framework mid-project, that distinction has real teeth. In these situations, the person taking the position has something to lose and the outcome is uncertain. Nothing is lost by an algorithm. Someone does. Courage resides in that asymmetry, which is genuinely difficult to duplicate.
In a business setting, the inclusion of compassion tends to cause controversy, which may be the reason it’s worth closely examining. According to Roslansky and Raman, a consultant by the name of Neil encourages team members to call each other simply to check in and say things like, “I’m going for a walk, do you want to come?” They admit that most people find it uncomfortable. However, Neil has seen it alter team dynamics in ways that affect output and the caliber of decisions. Sentiment is not the mechanism here. It’s because sincere human concern for another person’s well-being fosters the environment necessary for sincere, excellent thought. In this context, compassion is infrastructure.
The larger argument that the 5Cs are a part of is somewhat supported by LinkedIn’s own data. Since 2022, the number of job postings combining human judgment and AI literacy has increased by 180%. According to the World Economic Forum, creativity is the single core skill that is growing the fastest in the world. It ranked sixth in 2020 and first by 2025. The skill half-life in tech fields has decreased to less than 2.5 years, according to IBM research. When those data points are combined, the conclusion is not that technical proficiency is unimportant. It’s that they deteriorate rapidly, while these more basic human abilities do not.
It’s difficult to ignore that the CEO of a company whose operations revolve around professional identity and skill development came up with the names and categories for the 5Cs. LinkedIn has a real business interest in encouraging people to invest in themselves, especially in identifying the most profitable investments. This does not negate the validity of the framework, but it should be taken into consideration when assessing the degree of certainty of the claims.
Reading the justifications for each of the 5Cs gives one the impression that Roslansky and Raman are actually describing the circumstances in which sound judgment develops. The questions come from curiosity. The willingness to act based on incomplete information is a sign of courage. Options that weren’t previously apparent are produced by creativity. In teams, compassion preserves the caliber of thinking. Whether any of it is actually transmitted in a way that other people can use depends on communication. The framework feels coherent rather than arbitrary because each one is, in a way, a prerequisite for the others. It’s still unclear if it holds up in real-world scenarios across the entire spectrum of roles and industries covered by LinkedIn’s data. However, it’s more difficult to disagree with as a description of what makes any one individual truly hard to replace than the majority of what passes for career advice in 2026.