If more than 19 million American students are preparing to wrap up their fall semester and start looking ahead to securing internships and jobs next spring. It’s natural for them – and their families – to worry about the fate of the job market in the age of AI. Indeed, the CEO of Anthropic predicted this summer that within the next five years – and perhaps even sooner – AI adoption could reduce the number of entry-level workers in white-collar professions by 50%. The impact is already palpable: there are vacancies for entry-level corporate jobs decrease of 15%while the number of applications has increased by 30%. A special one Stanford study found that AI displacement currently appears to be disproportionately affecting younger workers.
To be fair, these changes are troubling. But despite the current, often overheated rhetoric, they are not unprecedented.
Of course we’ve heard about the lamplighters and horseshoe makers. A hundred years ago they were displaced by electricity and cars, and the economy kept going and they found something else to do. But the Internet bubble of 25 years ago, when we first launched our own careers, is an even more striking example. Discourse around the emerging “information highwayalso led to dystopian predictions that tens of millions of people would lose their jobs to Internet automation, leading to “the end of the work.”
In some cases the job displacement was real. One of us (Dorie) started her career as a journalist at a weekly newspaper and, just a year after her first job, she became dismissed then the economics of the ad-supported newspaper staggered. But Dorie – like most of us – managed to adapt and find new jobs in politics and nonprofit management before becoming an entrepreneur. And the economy as a whole has done well, with a current unemployment rate of net 4.3%compared to 4.9% in 2001, when Dorie lost her job.
The pattern is also clear in terms of the lived experience of individuals. Alexis, along with her co-author Nancy Hill, has done just that investigated Harvard’s Class of 1975, which examines generational differences and patterns. Her surprising conclusion is that the experiences of today’s students are remarkably similar to those of students fifty years ago. Despite changing external circumstances (whether campus protests over the war in Vietnam or Gaza, and the political realities of a Nixon or Trump administration), students’ professional hopes and concerns remain fundamentally the same. Can I find a career that is interesting and meaningful? What are the “best” skills to cultivate, and where should I focus my professional development? Can I support myself, and ultimately a family, in changing economic circumstances?
So – amid these real, but familiar concerns – what advice can we share on how to prepare for the age of AI without panicking?
1. Use AI as a competitive advantage
First, take advantage of the fact that there isn’t one established advantage in AI use now. If you’re a recent law school graduate, a senior partner with 30 years of professional experience and connections will almost always have an advantage over you in their knowledge of case law and ability to acquire clients. But no professional outside of academia has thirty years of experience with AI, so young professionals have as much opportunity as anyone to gain knowledge, expertise and professional status through the use of AI in their work. Indeed, AI is especially valuable for young adults studies show that AI use is most beneficial for workers with the least experience.
2. Focus on developing transferable skills
Second, focus on developing broad, transferable skills. We saw what happened when conventional wisdom (as of politicians to business leaders) came together on the idea that everyone should be trained in software coding. Now, in the wake of layoffs at major tech companies and slowed hiring, a new development has emerged software engineers have difficulty finding a job. If professional reinvention will be necessary for most of us over the course of our careers, we need to develop skills that can apply across multiple domains. For example, when Dorie lost her job as a journalist, she applied her writing experience and knowledge of politics (the area she covered) to transition to her next job as a campaign spokesperson.
3. Build relationships
Finally, focus on interpersonal relationships because – unlike you – AI can’t go to the water cooler. With enough data on meetings and emails, it is true that it can analyze professional networks and see networks of influence within organizations. (Although many organizations are still far from being able to fully deploy and utilize the power of that analysis.) But for now, AI will not be able to pick up what is not written down, from the canteen. gossip and speculation to whispered advice and bartered favors.
Of course, we are not suggesting that you become a Machiavellian operator, using innuendo and demanding reciprocity. But throughout the discourse about what AI can and cannot replace, it seems clear that interpersonal connections – and the deep-seated principles that govern them, such as the general desire to reciprocate good deeds that others have done before us – will likely endure. Investing in understanding other people and trying to help them where possible still seems like a worthwhile gamble in the age of AI.
In the past, young professionals could and did adapt to new technological realities, finding ways to make them their own. We believe this will happen again – and perhaps even require some of the costs Busy beyond the college experience, as students realize that no one can predict the future and therefore there is no “right answer” when we make choices in life.
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