In 1996, the reigning world chess champion – Garry Kasparov played IBMs Deep Blue in tournament condition. Kasparov won the match. One year later Deep Blue returned – smarter and ready for a rematch. It won, and the world of chess was changed forever.

The title of the movie made about those chess matches was called Game Over, but as a description as to what happened to chess, it could not have been more inaccurate. While it’s true that today no human grandmaster can hold a candle to chess computers, the game of chess itself is more popular than ever. Far more people play the game regularly, and elite players are better than they have ever been. These experts use chess computers to hone their game, rapidly simulate game situations, and help them understand possible approaches from their opponents. They build upon this computer help, and combine them with uniquely human strategies that make them unpredictable in a match situation.

What has happened in the world of chess can give us clues into what will probably happen in our workplaces as AI expands further. Our work environments will change, but (assuming advances in AI technologies are managed appropriately) they will not make us irrelevant. Instead, as humans, we will learn to work alongside our AI counterparts as part of multi-disciplinary teams to get better results faster.

And the skills we will need? They will be the things we do differently from AI, so each party can supplement the other. Computers will build technical skills faster and cheaper than us, so we will need to focus on soft skills, or as we prefer to call them, human skills. In the future, human really will be our superpower.