Generative AI Adoption and Higher Order Skills

The authors study how Generative AI (GenAI) adoption is reshaping work. While prior studies show that GenAI enhances role-level productivity and task composition, its influence on skills – the fundamental enablers of task execution, and the ultimate basis for employability – is less understood. Using job postings from 378 US public firms that recruited explicitly for GenAI skills (2021–2023), the authors analyze how GenAI adoption shifts the demand for workers’ skills. Their findings reveal that the advertised roles which explicitly rely on GenAI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, etc., have 36.7 percent higher requirements for cognitive skills. Further, a difference-in-differences analysis shows that the demand for social skills within GenAI roles increases by 5.2 percent post-ChatGPT launch. These emerging findings indicate the presence of a hierarchy of skills in organizations with GenAI adoption associated with roles that rely on cognitive skills and social skills.