What to tell your rising senior about AI and their future

 

Reposted from Substack:  Subscribe here for more A letter to teens about AI and jobs Some practical advice about what you should to be on the right side of disruption Alex Kotran Dec 9   READ IN APP   Episode six in our YouTube series, “Raising Kids in the Age of AI” focused on “Preparing kids for careers in an AI world.” It’s by far the most popular. That episode was tailored to parents, but I decided that I want to write something directly for the kids themselves on the topic. After all, Gen Z is probably more clued in to the growing chorus about the impact of AI on jobs than anyone else. A note to parents and educators: This letter is written directly to teens—specifically a rising senior in high school—but it applies to anyone wondering how to make decisions about their future. If you have a young person in your life navigating these questions, consider sharing this with them. Or read it yourself; the framing might help you give better advice. Either way, I hope it’s useful. Here’s the TL;DR: AI is real and will massively disrupt the job market right as you’re starting your career. But every industrial revolution has created more jobs than it destroyed. The key is being on the right side of the transition. The old playbook is dead: “pick the ‘safe’ major, follow the predictable path. Instead, focus on three things: Accomplish hard stuff. The domain doesn’t matter. It could be in academics, athletics, art, or personal hobbies. What matters is proving (to employers and yourself) that you can commit, struggle through setbacks, and deliver. Become a master at learning. Knowledge expires faster than ever. Your advantage is the ability to learn new things quickly, on your own, over and over again. Figure out how to deal with people. AI can’t navigate the friction of real human relationships. As routine work gets automated, this skill only becomes more valuable. Pursue what genuinely interests you, build the capacity to adapt, and you’ll be ready for whatever comes next. And in terms of doing hard stuff and becoming a master learner, reading 2,500 words on a topic you don’t fully understand is a great place to start. Upgrade to paid +++ Dear rising Senior, When I was your age, Facebook had just launched and no one I knew owned a smartphone. No Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram. No doomscrolling. No cyberbullying. Global Warming was a distant concern. Compared to today, politics was a love-fest. The adults seemed to have things figured out, and that left us to focus on the usual difficulties that come with growing into an adult. Answering the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” came down to picking a college major or career pathway. Needless to say, I had it easy. If it feels like the adults don’t have it together, it’s because we don’t. Anyone who tells you they know what the job market is going to look like when you enter the workforce is lying to you. The truth is: we don’t know. But I think we owe you more than vague advice you’re probably tired of hearing. “Learn to harness AI.” “Be adaptable.” “Develop soft skills.” None of that is wrong, exactly. But it doesn’t help when you’re trying to decide whether to take on $100,000 in debt for a degree that some people are saying will be useless by the time you graduate. I’m going to do my best to give you some practical advice. I won’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m going to tell you what we know, and what we don’t, and try to give you some clarity at a moment when everything seems so confusing and complicated and uncertain. The bad news first I wish I could tell you AI is just a bunch of hype. It’s real, and it’s kicking off a new Industrial Revolution. You might have seen headlines about AI-related mass layoffs at Amazon, UPS, Verizon, Target, Intel, and Duolingo (to name just a few). It’s not quite so simple as “AI is replacing all of those jobs,” but when you zoom out, what you see over the past year is a booming stock market and a cooling job market in a way that’s unprecedented in modern economics. Study after study is coming out predicting 10-50% of all jobs being at risk of being partially or entirely displaced by AI at some point in the first half of your careers. A lot of those jobs are in fields you might be considering: business, law, marketing, communications, entertainment, transportation, and even engineering and computer science. Ignore talk about “the AI bubble.” There was an internet bubble, an automobile bubble, an oil bubble, and a railroad bubble. The only thing you need to focus on is whether or not AI is going to massively disrupt the job market. And I do have an answer to that question: massive disruption to the job market is definitely, 100% coming. We don’t know how big or how fast, but it’s going to hit right as you are starting off your careers. The good news: you hit the generational lottery We’re in the opening act of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. There have only been three other moments like this in the history of human civilization. The steam engine. Electricity. The computer. And now AI. These are the inflection points that remade entire economies and created opportunities that the previous generation couldn’t have imagined. I know it doesn’t feel that way. But young people have a huge advantage during periods like this. You are AI and digital natives. You’ve been learning to use technology since you first got your hands on an iPad, smartphone, or PlayStation. Unlike your parents, who are set in their ways and comfortable with how things have been, you’ll be able to adapt quickly. More importantly, the AI revolution liberates you from having to know exactly what you want to be when you grow up. Yes, we don’t know what the “jobs of the future” are going to be, and that means you can pursue the subjects and fields that you are genuinely interested in. The old playbook—pick the “right” major, follow the “safe” path—doesn’t really apply anymore. What will matter is something more fundamental: your ability to tackle hard challenges, to keep learning as things change, and to work effectively with other people. I’ll come back to this. We know what industrial revolutions look like The best way to give you some concrete answers about jobs is to look back at the last three industrial revolutions. I’m a history nerd, but I know you probably aren’t, so here’s my attempt to boil it down: Revolutions create more jobs than they destroy, but the transition can be brutal The biggest opportunities aren’t where you’d expect The new jobs usually require different skills than the old ones. Let me give you a couple examples: Revolutions create more jobs than they destroy, but the transition can be brutal In 1890, there were 13,800 companies in the United States building horse-drawn carriages. The entire economy revolved around horses, which required teamsters (people who drove horse-driven carriages), groomers, coachmen, feed merchants, saddlers, blacksmiths, buggy whip makers. By 1920, the horse-drawn carriage industry disappeared into thin air, shrinking by 99%. Only 90 companies remained. Of course, the automobile didn’t just replace horses, it also created entirely new industries. Auto manufacturing, gas stations, roadside motels, suburbs, fast food. Millions of jobs that didn’t exist before. In the long run, far more jobs were created than lost. But the transition wasn’t painless. The collapse of the horse economy contributed to an agricultural depression in the 1920s. In 1933, the Bureau of the Census called the horse-to-car transition “one of the main contributing factors” to the Great Depression. Real people lost their livelihoods. The new jobs that emerged weren’t always accessible to the workers whose old jobs disappeared. This is why I take the current moment seriously. History tells us that technological revolutions ultimately create more than they destroy, but the transition can be rough, and not everyone makes it through to the other side. Your mission is making sure you are on the right side of that transition. The biggest opportunities aren’t where you’d expect You might remember learning about John D. Rockefeller in Social Studies. By 1902, he was the wealthiest person in America, worth about 1% of the entire U.S. economy. His company, Standard Oil, created and dominated the oil industry, which ushered in the modern world you know today. But here’s what most people miss: Rockefeller didn’t make his fortune on gasoline for automobiles. He made it on kerosene for lamps. Before electric lighting, kerosene was how Americans lit their homes. Rockefeller made it so cheap that working-class families could afford to read after dark for the first time. By the time Rockefeller became the wealthiest American, less than 1% of Americans owned a car. His entire fortune was built on the oil lamp, a revolutionary technology that would be largely obsolete within a generation. We’re in the AI equivalent of the kerosene lamp phase of the oil boom. Back then, most people couldn’t have imagined the combustion engine, let alone the cars, jet planes, and rocketships it would power. That’s just one example. Go back to the 1980s during the computer revolution, or the early 2000s during the smartphone revolution, and you’ll still find that few could have predicted what would be possible just a decade or two later. Simply put, we don’t know what AI has in store for us even if we know it has a lot in store. New jobs require different skills Fast forward to the 1970s. ATMs start rolling out, and everyone predicts they’ll decimate bank teller jobs. Makes sense, right? Machines that dispense cash 24/7 should eliminate the need for humans behind the counter. Here’s what actually happened: The average bank branch went from needing about 20 tellers to about 13. But because branches became cheaper to operate, banks opened way more of them. Demand for bank tellers actually increased. In 2018, there were 472,000 bank tellers in America, about the same as in 1990. The ATM didn’t replace tellers; it changed their job. Counting cash and processing deposits? The machine handles that now. But building relationships with customers, understanding their needs, helping them with complex problems? That became more valuable, not less. The tellers who thrived were the ones who developed those human skills. Same story with spreadsheets. In 1979, a Harvard student invented VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Before that, financial projections meant days of manual calculations. VisiCalc collapsed the work into seconds. In 1980, there were about 339,000 accountants in the U.S. By 2024, there were 1.6 million, nearly five times as many. The spreadsheet didn’t eliminate accountants. It eliminated the tedious parts of accounting and made the analytical, advisory, human-judgment parts of the job more important than ever. What’s different this time around? If technology always creates more than it destroys, why do you need to put your game face on? AI is moving fast. Faster than any other technology in history. It took about 75 years for cars, electricity, and telephones to reach 100 million users. Radio took 40 years. Television—25 years. Computers—15 years. Internet—10 years. Facebook—4.5 years. Instagram—2.5 years. TikTok—9 months. ChatGPT: 2 months. Whatever change is in store in the future, it’s in store in the near future. You can’t afford to ignore AI. My advice: focus on these three things So what does this mean for you practically? Remember that pattern from history: technology automates tasks, and the skills that remain become more valuable. Bank tellers who could count cash became less valuable; bank tellers who could build relationships became more valuable. Accountants who could crunch numbers became less valuable; accountants who could advise and analyze became more valuable. AI is automating a lot of what knowledge workers do: writing, coding, researching, analyzing. The question you should be asking isn’t “which jobs are safe?” It’s “what can I do that AI can’t?” Here’s my answer: Employers aren’t going to pay you for what you know. AI knows more. They’re not going to pay you to produce content or write code or do analysis. AI can do that faster and cheaper. They’re going to pay you for things that are harder to come by: the judgment to figure out what’s worth doing, when to trust the AI, when to question it, and when there needs to be a human touch. I’ve been working on this question: “how do we make sure young people are ready for the Age of AI?” since you were in 5th grade. We work with schools across the country helping teachers evolve what and how they teach. But let me boil it down: 1. Accomplish Hard Stuff This is the most important one. I don’t care what the hard stuff is. It could be academic—a demanding research project, a rigorous course load. It could be athletic—training for a marathon, making varsity, competing at a high level. It could be creative—writing a play, building an app, starting a band. It could be personal—overcoming a challenge, taking care of family responsibilities, working a demanding job. The specific domain matters less than the difficulty. What you’re demonstrating to future employers, and more importantly, to yourself, is that you can commit to something hard, struggle through the setbacks, and see it through. That’s judgment. That’s ownership. That’s what people will pay for. This is what college is still good for, by the way. Even with all the uncertainty, college remains a signal that you can do hard things. Getting in is hard. Finishing is hard. And that signal still matters. But college isn’t the only path, and it’s not worth crushing debt. State schools, community colleges, scholarships, apprenticeships, trade programs, military service. There are lots of ways to do hard things that set you up for the future. Figure out a path that challenges you without leaving you financially crippled. 2. Become a Master at Learning In a world where we know there’s going to be massive change, who has the advantage? People who can learn fast. The specific knowledge you acquire in school has a shorter half-life than ever. What matters more is your capacity to learn new things quickly, effectively, on your own. This means taking on subjects that genuinely interest you, because you’ll learn faster when you actually care. It means building the habit of learning outside the classroom—YouTube tutorials, online courses, books, podcasts, apprenticeships, just figuring things out as you go. It means getting comfortable being a beginner, over and over again. And it means developing the persistence to push through the frustrating early stages of any new skill, when you’re bad at it and it’s not fun yet. The best thing you can do after high school is pursue something you’re genuinely interested in, whether that’s at a university, a community college, a trade school, or on the job. You’ll be much more engaged in the learning process than if you’re just going through the motions for a credential someone told you to get. 3. Figure Out How to Deal With People This doesn’t mean you need to become a salesperson or a smooth talker. It doesn’t mean you have to be an extrovert. It means developing the capacity to work with other humans—with all the friction, misunderstanding, and difficulty that entails. This looks different for different people. Maybe it’s a group project or a team sport. Maybe it’s a part-time job where you deal with customers or coworkers. Maybe it’s organizing something at your school or in your community. Maybe it’s navigating a difficult family situation, or being there for a friend going through a hard time, or leading a club, or just learning to speak up in a room full of people. Any situation where you have to coordinate with others, navigate disagreements, give and receive feedback, or build trust. That’s the muscle you’re building. AI can’t do this. Chatbots might simulate conversation, but they can’t handle the genuine friction of human relationships. And as routine cognitive work gets automated, the premium on human relationship skills is only going to increase. There’s something else here too. You’re growing up in a world where AI companions are increasingly sophisticated. Some of your peers are spending hours talking to AI chatbots instead of navigating real friendships. I’m not here to lecture you about screen time—but I will say this: you don’t build the skill of dealing with people by avoiding people. The only way to develop those muscles is to actually use them. I know this is a lot. It’s frustrating and maybe a bit anxiety inducing to hear that the adults don’t know what’s coming. We’re supposed to have the answers. But here’s what I want you to take away: uncertainty isn’t the same as helplessness. You don’t need to predict the future to prepare for it. The people who thrive in moments like this aren’t the ones who guessed right about which industries would boom—they’re the ones who built the capacity to adapt, to learn, to push through hard things, and to work with others. You can do that. Start now. And when the world shifts in ways none of us can predict, you’ll be ready. P.S. — for those who are still unsatisfied with generalisms like “do hard stuff,” I’m planning a follow-up piece that digs in a bit further to give some more specific advice. To see that, you’ll have to subscribe!