Sarah McDevitt has released an e-book edition of The Round Table.
While companies rush to integrate AI, Sarah Stone McDevitt believes the future of work isn’t about pitting humans against technology, but rather teaching people to collaborate with it.
With organisations around the globe hurrying to adopt artificial intelligence (AI), many executives are wondering what roles humans will fill in an environment where machines can produce content, automate routine tasks, and accelerate decision‑making faster than ever before.
Sarah Stone McDevitt, a veteran SaaS executive, maintains that the solution isn’t to push back against AI or to fear it. Instead, she urges leaders to recognise the distinct contributions that only people can make.
“There is plenty of discussion about AI’s capabilities, but I became intrigued by what humans still excel at,” McDevitt explains.
Her position is that AI should not be viewed as a direct substitute for human skills, but rather as an instrument that enables people to focus on abilities machines find difficult to imitate: empathy, sound judgment, relationship‑building, and what she terms “relational intelligence.”
This differentiation matters because many companies currently assess AI mainly from the standpoint of productivity and efficiency. Although AI can help organisations operate more quickly, McDevitt contends that speed alone falls short. In a world that is growing increasingly automated, the capacity to generate meaning and grasp human context will become even more critical.
“AI will be responsible for handling information more and more. People will be responsible for handling meaning more and more,” she states.
For leaders, this poses a crucial question: not simply what can be automated, but what ought to stay uniquely human. If organisations concentrate exclusively on efficiency, they jeopardise the very interactions that build trust, drive motivation, inspire confidence, and foster connection.
As a senior leader, McDevitt works in an industry already undergoing transformation by AI. She is convinced that the most successful organisations won’t be those that automate the most, but those that deploy technology while simultaneously strengthening the human skills that make work worthwhile.
“The future belongs to people who become more human, not less,” McDevitt says.
Her latest publication, The Round Table: How Relational Intelligence Will Become Your Human Advantage in the AI Age, examines how relational intelligence may emerge as a decisive edge as AI grows more powerful.
At its core, McDevitt emphasises, the book’s message is not anti‑technology. It’s pro‑human.
“If there is one central concept in The Round Table, it is this: as technology becomes more capable, our humanity becomes more important. The future is not humans versus AI. It’s humans working alongside AI while developing the uniquely human qualities that machines struggle to replicate.”
"The Round Table: How Relational Intelligence Will Become Your Human Advantage in the AI Age" was published by The Book Shelf Press and is currently available for order on Amazon.
About Sarah Stone McDevitt
Sarah Stone McDevitt is Senior Director of Partner Strategy at HubSpot, in addition to being an author, TEDx speaker, and podcast guest. Her work investigates the intersection of AI, relational intelligence, emotional intelligence, and leadership, concentrating on how organisations can adopt technology while preserving their human core.
Ameesha Green
The Book Shelf Press
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