ai orchestration – Impact Lab

By Futurist Thomas Frey

In 2011, I wrote about 11 critical skills for the future that weren’t being taught in school. The list included things like pattern recognition, creative problem-solving, and systems thinking—skills that seemed essential for navigating an increasingly complex world.

Now, in 2025, I need to completely rewrite that list. Not because those skills aren’t important anymore, but because AI has fundamentally changed which skills actually matter. Most of what I recommended in 2011—pattern recognition, data analysis, information synthesis—AI now does better than humans ever could.

The gap between what colleges teach and what you’ll actually need has widened dramatically. Universities are still preparing students for a world that’s vanishing while the AI age demands entirely different capabilities.

Here are the critical skills you’ll actually need—and why no college is teaching them.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

In 2012, I wrote about the eight critical value points of being a futurist. I explained how futurists provide unique value through pattern recognition, trend analysis, cross-disciplinary synthesis, and the ability to see connections others miss. It took years to develop these skills. They were rare, valuable, and in demand.

Now, in 2025, I can ask Claude or ChatGPT to analyze emerging trends, identify patterns across disparate domains, and generate plausible future scenarios—and get sophisticated answers in seconds rather than the weeks it would take me to research and synthesize the same information.

This isn’t just humbling. It’s existential. If AI can do in seconds what took me decades to learn, what’s the value of being a futurist anymore?

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: I’m not alone. Almost every knowledge profession is facing the same reckoning.

Tag: ai orchestration

Critical Skills for the AI Age That Are not Taught in College

The Futurist’s Dilemma: When AI Can Predict the Future Faster Than You Can