AI Is Giving Experts More Time to Be Experts

By Stephanie Cudmore

I work in marketing and communications, which means I spend a lot of time thinking about marketing strategy, audiences, what we're trying to say, the best way to say it and whether the thing we're about to put into the world is actually useful, or whether we're just adding more noise.

At least, that's the part of my job that requires my expertise.

There's also a lot of work around the work I do. Organizing information. Summarizing notes. Staring at a blank page while trying to get a first draft moving. Reworking the same idea for different audiences and platforms. Digging through documents to find the one piece of information I know I've seen somewhere. Thinking about and sourcing creative, considering layout and making sure everything aligns with our brand.

Increasingly, I'm using AI to help me with some of that work. And the more I use it, the more I question one of the dominant narratives around AI: that it's going to replace experts.

Because that's not what I'm experiencing. AI isn't replacing my expertise. It's giving me more time to use it.

The opportunity isn't just to do more, faster

There's a lot of conversation about AI and efficiency. How much time can we save? How much more can we produce? How quickly can we get something done?

Those are fair questions. I can absolutely do certain things faster today than I could a few years ago. But I don't think speed is the most interesting part of this shift. The more interesting question is what we do with the capacity we get back.

If AI can help me get to a first draft faster, I have more time to make that draft better. I can think more deeply about the person reading it, challenge the idea and ask whether it actually sounds like SGI. I can notice that a perfectly crafted sentence is actually something we would never say.

With that gained capacity, I can spend more time on planning, strategy, judgment and storytelling. In other words, I can spend more time being a marketing and communications professional.

And I don't think this is unique to marketing.

Expertise is more than knowing things

We sometimes talk about expertise as if it's a collection of information stored in someone's head. The expert knows more and, therefore, the expert is valuable.

If that's all expertise is, I can understand why AI feels threatening. AI can access, organize and synthesize an enormous amount of information very quickly.

But after working with experts across different areas of business, I don't think knowing things is what makes someone truly good at their job.

For example, an experienced operations professional can look at a process that seems perfectly logical and know it won't work in practice. They've seen what happens when real people, competing priorities and a busy Tuesday afternoon get involved. They know where the friction will happen and when the “efficient” solution is likely to create three new problems somewhere else.

That's expertise. And so much of expertise is deeply human. It's built through lived experience, observation and, importantly, relationships with other people.

You can't automate a real relationship

I think this becomes especially clear in sales and business development.

AI can help you research a prospective client. It can summarize information about their company, suggest questions for a meeting and help you draft a follow-up email afterwards. All of that can be incredibly useful.

But AI can't sit across the table from someone and notice that their energy changed when you mentioned a particular challenge. It can't decide, in the moment, to put the prepared questions aside and say, “Tell me more about that.”

It can't have coffee with someone you've known for ten years and recognize that something feels different. It can't build a history of shared conversations, experiences and trust. It can't be the person someone calls because, three years ago, you listened when they needed to talk through a problem without immediately trying to sell them something.

Real relationships are built over time. They're built by showing up, paying attention, being curious and genuinely caring about the person in front of you.

That's particularly important in professional services, where the person providing the service is often inseparable from the service itself.

Professional services are personal

In law and other professional services, clients aren't simply buying information. If they were, the internet would have fundamentally disrupted professional services long before AI arrived.

Clients come to professionals because they need someone to understand their specific situation. They need context and judgment. They need someone who can take years of experience and apply it to a problem that may look familiar on the surface but has its own people, history, risks and complications underneath.

And often, they're coming to a professional at a difficult or significant moment. A business is changing. A relationship has broken down. A deal matters. A career is at a crossroads. There's risk, uncertainty or pressure, and the client doesn't necessarily know what happens next.

In those moments, expertise matters enormously. But so does trust.

A client needs to believe that you understand them. They need to feel comfortable telling you the thing they almost didn't mention. They need to trust your judgment when there isn't one perfect, obvious answer.

Those relationships don't happen because you sent the world's most perfectly drafted AI-generated email. They happen because of the conversations you've had, the questions you've asked and the way you've made someone feel when they've trusted you with something important.

AI can support a professional in that relationship. It may help them prepare more thoroughly, organize information faster or spend less time on administrative work. But the relationship is still between two people, and in professional services, that human connection remains one of the most important elements of the service being provided.

AI is moving the starting line

Maybe that's the shift I'm noticing most.

Experts have traditionally spent a significant amount of time getting from zero to 60. Researching, organizing, synthesizing, drafting and preparing have all been necessary parts of getting to the point where we can apply our expertise.

AI can increasingly help us get to 30, 40 or even 50 much faster. But then what?

That's where the value of the expert becomes clearer. Can you recognize when the output is wrong? Can you see what's missing or understand the context that changes the recommendation entirely? Can you make the judgment call when there are several technically correct answers?

And can you understand the person in front of you well enough to know what they actually need from you?

The faster technology gets us to the starting point, the more important those abilities become. Getting somewhere quickly isn't the same as knowing what to do when you arrive.

More time to be an expert

I don't think we should ignore the questions and concerns surrounding AI. There are real conversations to be had about how we use it, where we use it and what responsible adoption looks like.

But I also think there's an opportunity here that goes beyond productivity.

What if the goal isn't simply to use AI to produce more? What if we use it to create space to think more deeply, challenge our assumptions and be more curious? What if it gives us more time to talk to our clients, have coffee with someone in our network or pick up the phone instead of sending another email? What if it gives professionals more time to listen?

The opportunity for experts isn't to compete with AI at the things AI can do quickly. It's to spend more time applying the experience, judgment and perspective they've spent years building, and investing in the human relationships that make that expertise matter.

AI isn't replacing my expertise. It's giving me more time to use it.