The pace of change in business technology has always been measured in years. Experts now say it’s being measured in months.
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to rapidly evolve, the conversation has shifted from what it can do to what it will change. And for workers, it’s increasingly a question of relevance.
“I think we will be going through a fundamental transition from a jobs-based society to an entrepreneurship-based one,” says Mohammad Keyhani, an associate professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business.
“This means that more and more people will have to find their own way of creating value rather than step into a value creation system designed by someone else and get a salary. The idea of just expecting that it is normal to have a salaried job will become less common.”
This shift will lead to themes such as the rise of the “solopreneur,” says Keyhani. For example, democratized technology and vibe coding, also known as AI-assisted development, will allow domain experts to build functional software and organizations without large engineering teams or heavy funding.
To this end, Keyhani believes the biggest shift for business leaders will be transitioning from managing large teams of people to orchestrating fleets of AI agents within much smaller, highly centralized organizations.
In this new landscape, the primary role of workers will no longer be focused on production, but, instead, the validation, integration and assumption of legal and professional liability for AI-generated outputs.
“When machines can instantly generate complex baseline work, the critical human skill becomes editing, verifying and taking ownership of that output,” says Keyhani, whose expertise lies in areas such as generative AI applications, digital entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial strategy.
“A human who is competent enough to manage AI agents and validate their work to a level where they are comfortable bearing legal and professional liability will be the cornerstone of the post-genAI economy.”
Keyhani points to another reason why AI won’t fully replace workers.
“Complete displacement is unlikely because of a sharply defined ‘moral frontier,’” he says. “Research shows that even as AI performance outstrips humans, society harbors a deep moral repugnance toward automating roles rooted in caregiving, emotional labour and human connection.”
Anne Patterson, chief research and communications officer at the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) emphasizes that while many jobs are exposed to AI – especially in technology and business administration – this exposure will not automatically result in job losses.
For example, she points to a productivity and employment trend study released late last year by ICTC that revealed a surge in demand for software engineers, even though it is an occupation that is at a high risk for AI exposure.
Patterson also points to a dramatic increase in demand for risk management and product selection skills across occupations in the information and communication technology sector, driven by cybersecurity and digital transformation.
“What we’re seeing is that there is a shift in what that demand looks like. Increasingly, businesses are looking for a combination of business skills and technical skills,” says Patterson, whose organization is a not-for-profit centre of expertise that focuses on translating research and policy advice into actionable interventions such as reskilling and workforce development for industry and policymakers.
“So, there’s this really interesting kind of parallel growth chart that we see where the demand for AI skills across occupations is ticking upwards, but so is the demand for business skills. And that’s because employers want people who have technology skills to also have applied business knowledge so that they can understand how to leverage emerging technologies for the business context.”
Tracy Arno, CEO and founder of Essence Search Firm, similarly pushes back against the narrative of widespread job displacement.
“This is not new. It’s just the next stage of transferring your skills,” says Arno.
Yet she notes that while demand for business-aligned technical talent is rising, the labour market is still adjusting to what that shift requires. For example, many employers are still not moving quickly enough when it comes to reskilling their existing workforce.
“Right now, in North America, we have a huge gap. Leaders are not training and developing the people below them,” she says, pointing to an “hourglass” dynamic, where executives approaching retirement have benefited from a full cycle of professional development and experience, but have not developed the leaders coming behind them.
“The skillsets around business operations, strategy, people leadership … all of those experiences that are not AI are what we need to focus on. So, if you’re asking about the gaps, it’s not specific to a profession, but at a competency level.”
Patterson agrees, noting that Canadian businesses historically have low rates of employer-led upskilling, often failing to see the immediate return on investment for training their staff.
A Future Skills Centre report released in 2023 found Canadian firms lag their international peers in investment in employer‑sponsored training, with modest spending per employee and uneven training distribution across firms and worker groups.
More recently, a Statistics Canada business conditions survey from 2025 shows that only one‑third of employers plan to provide formal training.
“And so, we need more of that because businesses are saying they need the talent to have technical skills, to have applied business knowledge and domain and industry knowledge. And yet, they are not really investing in that,” she says, pointing to policy interventions such as workforce grants that are trying to address this gap.
“It’s a business challenge in that it takes time. You have to allow someone time away from their core role to upskill and reskill.”
Looking forward, Patterson calls for a reimagining of the pipeline into the workforce, suggesting that academic institutions should prioritize applied knowledge and co-op placements.
She cites high youth unemployment rates in Alberta, caused by graduates entering the job market without the right combination of skills, including applied business knowledge. Recent data from Statistics Canada shows that Alberta has the second highest overall youth unemployment rate among provinces in Canada, behind only New Brunswick.
After rising to 17 per cent in August 2025, it dipped slightly to 14.6 per cent earlier this year.
“We have this mass unemployment challenge where youth are there, they’re available, but the demand on the business side is for mid-career professionals,” says Patterson.
“That’s where there’s real unmet demand right now. It’s that mid-level. And unfortunately, we’re not building the pipeline because youth are not graduating with those specific skills that businesses need right now.”
Arno echoes the sentiment that real-world experience is key, stressing that employers are looking for more than formal education alone.
“We’re not just looking for what you learned in school. What we’re looking for is what you can contribute through your transferable skillset, your competencies and your personality traits,” she says.
Keyhani, meanwhile, believes the most practical step that workers can take to future-proof themselves is to use AI as a reasoning engine and a sparring partner, rather than an “oracle that simply does the work for you.”
He notes that in the university classroom, the students who excel are the ones who direct, test and refine AI outputs, rather than passively accepting a generated baseline.
“You must intentionally subject yourself to the difficult, unassisted struggle of learning in a specific domain to build true expertise,” he says.