Measuring Power Skills: How AI Can Transform Talent Assessment

AI didn’t just speed up work. It changed what matters at work. For decades, talent assessments measured traits, cognitive ability, and technical skills. That made sense when roles were stable and hard skills lasted longer than your iPhone upgrade cycle.

But now? AI handles more of the execution. Technical skills commoditize fast. And the real differentiator isn’t what you know — it’s how you think. In this episode of Work Tech Weekly, I sit down with Dustin Clinard, CEO of Ignis AI, to talk about what happens when the baseline shifts but our measurement tools don’t.

We dig into why traditional assessments may be misaligned with the AI era and whether human skills have quietly become the hardest skills of all. AI can now build a presentation deck in seconds — probably better than you can. But can it decide what story the deck should tell? “The part that [AI] can't do is think, ‘What do I want it to say and in what order?’ That's my judgment call to make,” Dustin says. “Once I decide that, the building-it part can happen really quickly.”

If AI is accelerating execution, judgment becomes the edge. The question is: can we measure it? If you’re rethinking hiring, development, or what performance actually looks like in an AI-first world, this one’s for you.