Artificial intelligence is often sold as the ultimate productivity tool. New technologies promise to help us produce more, faster and cheaper. According to Belgian AI strategist Gaëlle Helsmoortel, that promise misses the bigger shift. If machines increasingly take care of the execution, productivity is no longer where organisations create value. The real question becomes: where do people make the difference?

Execution has no value anymore

For decades, consultants produced presentations, lawyers drafted contracts and marketers created copy. Increasingly, AI can do much of that work. "Execution now has no value anymore. It's for the machines," Helsmoortel says. If an AI model can produce in minutes what once took hours, execution becomes a commodity. In that sense, value shifts to the people who define the problem, provide context and judge whether the result produced by the bots is any good. That also puts pressure on business models built around billable hours and routine knowledge work.

The mistake many organisations make, Helsmoortel argues, is that they use AI to optimise yesterday's way of working instead of rethinking tomorrow's. "There are two AI strategies," she says. "The first is optimisation: doing what you have always done, only faster, cheaper and better. That is where almost every organisation is focusing today. The second is real innovation. When the execution part is for the machines, what can you do with the time that frees up that you couldn't do before?"

"Make those machines do the things you find boring and use this time to network, to be real, to be there for your customers."That question leads to a different way of thinking about AI. The technology is not valuable because it helps people produce more. It is valuable if it creates time for something that only people can do: be human. Machines can summarise meetings, analyse documents and generate reports. They cannot build trust. They cannot develop long-term partnerships or understand the subtle dynamics of a difficult negotiation. "Make those machines do the things you find boring and use this time to network, to be real, to be there for your customers," Helsmoortel says. As AI-generated work becomes commonplace, trust becomes a competitive advantage. "People will want to work with people they know."

The human advantage

For organisations, that means putting people before technology. "You don't create value by investing in tools. You need the tools, but you have to invest in people and in a major  mindset transformation." The shift also changes who succeeds inside organisations. Helsmoortel does not point to software developers or AI specialists. Instead, she highlights what she jokingly calls "the boring people": the colleagues who spent years documenting processes, mapping workflows and insisting that every step should be clearly described.

"When you can write processes, it means that you can describe the needs. It means that you can contextualize your own work. And this is precisely what those machines need." Good prompting is not about clever tricks. It starts with understanding your own work. In other words, AI does not replace expertise; it amplifies it. Those who understand their craft deeply are best placed to translate that knowledge into instructions, evaluate the results and improve them.

The same applies to the next generation entering the labour market. Junior employees traditionally learned by carrying out routine work, making mistakes and gradually developing judgement. If AI takes over much of that work, organisations can no longer assume experience will develop naturally. "Companies have to realise that and find other ways to make those younger people know what the job is." Teaching people to use AI will not be enough. They also need opportunities to develop expertise.

Europe’s opportunity to lead

If AI becomes part of every organisation and every aspect of daily life, the question is no longer whether we use it. The question is what kind of society we want to build with it. For Helsmoortel, that is where Europe has an opportunity to lead. While Europe didn't win the war on creating AI models, the battle for enterprise implementation is wide open, and that is where we can lead.

AI has largely been framed as a race for bigger models and higher productivity. Helsmoortel argues that Europe should take a different path. That starts with investing in people, protecting our data and building infrastructure that uses scarce resources such as energy and water responsibly. It also means developing technology that reflects European values instead of simply importing someone else's.

"We don't have to create a new Google or a new OpenAI. We have to find our own way."

If machines increasingly take care of execution, productivity is no longer the finish line. The real opportunity is deciding what people do with the time AI gives back. AI may give us the opportunity to spend more time doing what makes us human: be curious, build lasting relationships, and use our creativity to imagine things that did not exist before. "I think we could improve a lot of things in society and in the world if we use it that way."