5 Reasons People Will Never Go Out of Style in the AI Era

While everyone zigs toward AI, Candice Mitchell, founder of Talent Collective and USA Today bestselling author of Choose You, is zagging toward people. In this episode of The Capability Edge, she shares five reasons people will never go out of style, and why Talent Development teams will be the glue that holds an AI-powered workplace together.

Candice draws on the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest study of happiness ever run, and Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz's book The Good Life. She covers the US Surgeon General's warning that loneliness is as harmful as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, research linking good managers to lower heart disease risk, and a Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon study showing that the more people trust AI, the less critical thinking they apply.

You'll also get a simple social fitness check to see which relationships energize you and which drain you, at home and at work.

The 5 reasons people will never go out of style

People make the good life. Relationship satisfaction at 50 predicted health at 80 better than cholesterol did.The quality of your people decides your energy. A toxic boss can drain you. A great team can carry you through a 12-hour day.Nobody wins anything big alone. Behind Hillary and Tenzing on Everest stood about 350 porters and 20 Sherpas.Good thinking needs other people. Critical and systems thinking get sharper when someone pushes back.Talent Development is the glue. The people who build people will decide which companies make it through the AI shift.

Key stats from this episodeLacking social connection is as harmful as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and about half of US adults report loneliness (US Surgeon General, 2023).In the Harvard Study of Adult Development, relationship satisfaction at age 50 predicted health at 80 better than cholesterol levels did.Time spent with friends in person fell from about 60 minutes a day in 2003 to 20 minutes in 2020 (US Surgeon General, 2023).Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement (Gallup).It takes about 50 hours together to make a casual friend and more than 200 hours to make a close friend (Jeffrey Hall, University of Kansas).85% of employers name upskilling as their top workforce strategy through 2030, ahead of automation at 73% (World Economic Forum, 2025).

Frequently asked questionsWhat did the Harvard Study of Adult Development find? Since 1938 the study has followed 724 men and now their children. Its clearest finding is th