- 2 days ago
As AI reshapes the workforce, author Benjamin Todd explains how graduates can build resilient, fulfilling careers and thrive in a changing job market.
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00:00The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.
00:10Oh, what happened?
00:15The caps and gowns are on, the diplomas are in hand,
00:19and yet the boos are ringing out across commencement stages nationwide,
00:23as the class of 2026 makes clear that they are not buying
00:26what Silicon Valley is selling about AI and the future of work.
00:31Joining us now to break this all down is Benjamin Todd, author of 80,000 Hours,
00:36How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good.
00:38Thank you so much for being here, Benjamin.
00:41Thanks so much for having me.
00:42Of course.
00:43I mean, these stadium-wide boos erupted at University of Arizona and other campuses this spring
00:49when speakers, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, brought up AI.
00:53So what do these boos tell you about how the class of 2026 is actually feeling
00:58as they step into the workforce for the first time?
01:02Yeah, I mean, you can see this in polling across the United States.
01:05AI is really unpopular.
01:08And I think to some degree, people are right to be concerned.
01:11We'll probably see more change to the job market in the next 10 years
01:15than we've seen in the whole last generation.
01:19Yeah, it seems like there's so much change coming.
01:22And as always with change, people are uncomfortable with it.
01:24They maybe don't understand it.
01:26And they're trying to figure out what they're going to do
01:28and how AI is really going to affect them.
01:30Your book is literally titled,
01:32With the Number of Hours in an Average Career,
01:34a number that feels a lot more uncertain to young people right now.
01:37So how has your core framework for thinking about career planning shifted
01:41now that AI is really in the picture and here to stay?
01:46Well, it really shifts which skills are going to be most useful
01:51for getting a job and most valuable in the future.
01:54And in particular, we should expect that things AI can do well,
01:59AI is good at, are going to become less valued.
02:02But that also means that the money that would have been spent on those skills
02:09is going to be spent on something else.
02:10So there's other things that AI can't do yet will be going up in value.
02:17And so as a job seeker, you need to be focusing more on those.
02:20Yeah.
02:21Yeah, no, that's such a good point that it'll just free up people to do different jobs.
02:26But one of the concerns then is what about those entry-level jobs?
02:29One analysis suggests that new college graduate unemployment
02:32could reach 30% within two years as AI absorbs, again,
02:36those entry-level white-collar jobs.
02:38So is that a scare tactic or a real possibility?
02:40And either way, what should grads then be doing about it right now,
02:44knowing that some changes are happening?
02:48Yeah, and it seems to be, it's especially difficult for young grads
02:51because exactly those more standardized, routine, white-collar analysis-type positions
02:57seem to be the things that AI is best at now.
03:00And that's undermining the kind of traditional training path that a lot of people aim to take.
03:06And I don't think we quite know what's going to replace it.
03:11But one kind of idea would be to focus on slightly more entrepreneurial-type skills
03:20skills because that is something that AI is still quite bad at.
03:25It's like carrying out a project over many months.
03:28And AI is not allowed to run a company itself.
03:31So while at the same time, it's also made it much cheaper to start a new organization
03:35or a new nonprofit or a new company.
03:38So I think that is one area to think about is like,
03:42how could you get small teams of people using AI to do things that in the past
03:48would have been not economic to do?
03:50Yeah, I mean, those entrepreneurial skills are just so important.
03:53And you're right now, so readily available, all of these different opportunities
03:57for people to start their own businesses or things like that.
04:00But again, I think that a lot of these young people worry,
04:03well, what if I don't have the skills yet that I would have maybe developed
04:05some of those entry-level jobs?
04:07So again, that uncertainty here.
04:09I mean, roughly 42% of new students expect AI to have an influence on their career
04:13and whatever career they choose to pursue.
04:15And about 10% have already changed their major because of it,
04:19with tech and computer science most commonly abandoned.
04:21So are students pivoting in the right direction?
04:23Are they running from the wrong things?
04:25What's going on here?
04:29It's tricky.
04:30But one thing, this has been a trend over the last several decades,
04:34is firstly, it's jobs involving social skills that have actually seen some of the most growth,
04:40not STEM skills.
04:42But what's grown even more is jobs that involve both STEM skills and social skills.
04:48And that, I think, is a bit of a clue that these jobs where you kind of have some technical
04:54knowledge,
04:55but you're able to translate that into solving a real problem.
04:58That is a really big bottleneck.
05:00So I wouldn't necessarily say to just like kind of give up on understanding coding,
05:05but it's like it's the ability to combine that with the social skills or entrepreneurial skills
05:10or understanding of a particular problem that seems like could be some of the most valuable combinations
05:16in the next couple of years.
05:17Yeah, that's so interesting that interweaving those skills actually might be the path forward
05:22for a lot of people here.
05:23Your book challenges the old follow your passion advice as dangerously out of date,
05:28especially in the age of AI.
05:29So if not passion, what should graduates really be optimizing for when choosing a career path forward?
05:34Is it really just mixing those two types of skills,
05:37or what should they be looking for as they move forward?
05:41Well, yeah, our slogan instead is get good at something and then use it to help other people.
05:46So do what contributes.
05:48And instead of thinking just what are you passionate about now,
05:51think about how you could build valuable skills using some of the things we've just been thinking about.
05:57And then when you build those skills up over time,
05:59what can you do with them that's actually meaningful to you?
06:02And how can you use them to get all the other ingredients for a satisfying job?
06:06Because passion is not sufficient for success.
06:08Yeah, exactly.
06:09I mean, that's such a good point that just having that passion,
06:12especially with all of these technological advances, is not going to get you there.
06:15But that combination really could.
06:18And again, you argue that some careers have hundreds of times more impact than others.
06:22But most people don't really know which ones in a world where AI is already displacing these entry-level roles.
06:27So which types of careers are most likely to matter and survive in the next decade?
06:31Again, we're talking about all of these different skills kind of mushed together.
06:35But are there any specific sectors or things that you think people should look at that you think really will
06:40kind of take off as we move forward?
06:43There's nothing that is safe forever.
06:46It's only just a question of trying to, as the key bottleneck moves forward, trying to move with that and
06:56focus on what's most valuable at each time.
06:58And so that's going to be like a wave moving forward.
07:02And yeah, we've talked about social skills and entrepreneurial skills.
07:06I mean, obviously, another big area of things is any job where a relationship with a particular person or physical
07:14presence is inherently part of the job.
07:17So something like nursing, for instance, you would expect to be more resilient and might even grow because nurses might
07:26be able to do things that doctors would have been required to do before.
07:30But instead, a nurse could be using lots of AI advice, which could kind of fill in for that loads
07:37of rote learning that needs to be done in medical school, enable them to do more than they were able
07:42to before.
07:43But they still need to be there in person.
07:46Yeah, that's such an interesting example and a good way of kind of thinking outside of the box of, OK,
07:51where can we actually put our time that potentially will be growing instead of shrinking as we move forward?
07:57And again, important to think about what you mentioned there with the flexibility and kind of adaptability as we move
08:01forward with things constantly changing.
08:04Now, the booths that were at commencement weren't just about jobs, right?
08:07Students were also voicing anger about AI's environmental costs, racial bias, who gets rich from it.
08:13Is this generation asking the right questions and how does that broader frustration fit into your framework of doing good
08:19through your career?
08:22Well, I do agree we could be facing really transformative change from AI and that's going to create a lot
08:30of risks.
08:33And to those, I mean, I would think in some ways it could get a lot worse than those types
08:41of issues.
08:42I mean, the AI companies themselves are trying to build fully autonomous AI agents and they're trying to figure out
08:50how to get AIs to improve themselves.
08:54So how to do automate AI research itself, which could cause progress to suddenly accelerate even further.
09:03So that could be a pretty scary situation if we have all these AI agents and then suddenly we get
09:08five years of AI progress in one year.
09:11That's like a real risk of losing control.
09:14And I think all these risks are really neglected still in terms of the number of people actually working on
09:18them.
09:19And so I think it's totally justified to be quite concerned about what's happening.
09:25Yeah, and it seems like they really are concerned, as so many of us are.
09:28And we'll have to wait to see what happens as all of this moves forward.
09:32Lastly, for that graduate who just walked off the stage this spring with their diploma in hand, more anxious than
09:37they even are excited, perhaps.
09:38What is the single most important mindset shift that your book asks them to make?
09:46I think it's really that mindset shift of what can I actually offer that would help and would be valued
09:55both economically, but also in terms of help, actually helping to tackle these problems.
10:04And yeah, basically trying to think what can you do that contributes and that's a difficult thing to figure out.
10:10But then I'd say the second mindset shift is then trying to get out and try as many things as
10:16possible.
10:17And no one, yeah, no one can easily predict ahead of time what's going to happen, but you can take
10:21an experimental approach and yeah, try and do the best you can.
10:26I mean, finding a career is difficult at the best of times, and I think it's especially difficult now, but
10:32you can try and find your options and make the best choices between them that you can.
10:36That's very true.
10:37Keeping in mind all of that curiosity and adaptability as we move forward so much to keep our eye on.
10:42We really appreciate you being here today.
10:44Benjamin Todd, author of 80,000 Hours, How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good.
10:48Thank you so much.
10:50Great.
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