This study explores how exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and professional experience influence which soft skills project management (PM) professionals consider most important for training. As AI increasingly handles routine and analytical PM tasks, it becomes more important to understand which human-centered skills should remain a priority in future PM education. A quantitative, cross-sectional design is used. Primary data were collected from 51 PM professionals drawn from a population of approximately 300 PM-certified professionals active in Albania, representing a sampling fraction of approximately 17%. The survey instrument comprised 29 items spanning professional profile, methodological practice, AI familiarity and use, soft-skill importance ratings, and training needs. The dependent variable, the Human-Skills Index, is constructed as the mean importance rating across four human-centered competencies: critical thinking, creativity, ethics, and empathy. Hierarchical regression results show that AI competence is the strongest positive predictor of the Human-Skills Index (B = 0.386, p = 0.002), explaining an additional 17.3% points of variance beyond professional experience alone. Professional experience is also significant (B = 0.213, p = 0.033), while Agile maturity is not. The findings reject the substitution narrative: project managers with greater AI competence value human skills more, not less. AI literacy and human-skills development should be integrated into PM training curricula as mutually reinforcing capabilities.

Keywords

Artificial intelligence, project management, human skills, complementarity, Albania