“My experience with people who ever doubts themselves is that they will prepare, they will read everything they will reach the experts, they will do their job with humility because they will not think they have all the answers,” said former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on stage at the recent Zendesk related 2025.
After sharing stories from her time as prime minister, including her approach to empathetic leadership, the country’s battle with social media and her own battles fought with confidence as she entered the global light, Ardern’s discussion quickly turned to artificial intelligence.
“You can either have excitement or enthusiasm for the opportunity ahead of us,” she said as she compared the emergence of artificial intelligence with an endless list of technological advances over the course of decades.
A human-centric AI landscape
One of the biggest concerns we have written about AI since the public preview of Chatgpt that opened a new chapter in public artificial intelligence is its influence on the workforce.
The growing fear that AI will replace human workers, especially in roles involving repeated and administrative tasks, continues to play out today.
According to Ardern, these fears not only come from the technology itself, but from the workers’ past experience with changes that may have failed them – changes that did not fully consider human influence.
In her discussion with the audience at Zendesk Related 2025, it was clear that the former New Zealand Prime Minister advocates proactively tackling such concerns through more clarity, guidance and transparency.
ARDERN’s approach involves changing dialogue from one of fear to one of the possibilities – understanding that jobs will be redefined rather than wiped out completely.
Although their roles will change, potentially significantly, the manager said workers have to understand that the value they bring to organizations will remain constant.
Of course, artificial intelligence can significantly increase productivity for workers operating in specific areas, but even AI agents cannot operate completely autonomously – they still require lots of human input, be it on development, guidance or correction.
In addition, she highlighted how governments can protect workers at the macro level. ARDERN cited New Zealand’s initiatives, including income insurance and lifelong learning programs designed to facilitate the transition to this new hiring era.
Citizens are more likely to feel comfortable with such major changes when there is a guarantee and support of their own government.
This is in line with the need for a cultural development where citizens and employees must adopt the values of continuous learning, innovation and increased agility. Businesses and state agencies have most of the responsibility for this, but the workers must be equally proactive in their approach to adaptation.
To summarize, it looked like ARDERN is not concerned about AI’s influence on the long term. Although she acknowledges that short -term displacement may be worrying about some, deeper support and commitment from all parties involved, including governments, businesses and staff will ultimately secure our continued role on this planet.
