Preparing Our Kids for the Ai Future
My friend Andrea Bridges-Smith recently posted a comment echoing something I hear often from parents of kids still in school:
“I am starting to worry about this for my kids! My oldest is about to start high school and I have no idea what jobs are going to be available to him in 4-8 years - how do we even advise them on what to study?”
This is something I’ve been thinking about seriously for a couple of years given that (a) labor market disruptions due to Ai now seem inevitable, and (b) my kids are sophomores in college. Here’s what I’ve settled on for an answer:
- In the short term, you’ll be competing for jobs with other people. Some people will be better at using Ai tools than others. Make sure you’re among the best at using these tools.
- In the long term, you won’t be competing for (most) jobs at all; they’ll be done by machines. Make sure you have a source of income other than selling your labor.
What this means in practical terms is pretty simple:
- Get really good at using Ai tools while you’re still in school. Not to cheat, obviously, or to do the work for you, but to become much more productive. Understand how to use the technology to do research, write better, communicate better, and manage your time. Become an expert at using not only general-purpose LLM’s like ChatGPT and Claude but also the tools specific to your field, whether that’s Cursor for software development, Microsoft Copilot for knowledge work, Adobe Firefly for creators, Notion for project management, etc.
- Use your talents and skills to get a high-paying job.
- While you’re young and have relatively low expenses, invest as much of your paycheck as possible in stocks of companies that make or benefit from Ai. Depending on your personal appetite for diversification, this might mean investing in specific companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google, a basket of Ai stocks like the so-called Magnificent Seven, or the broader market. Your goal is to build an investment portfolio that can generate income for you when the jobs are gone.
This plan may sound extreme, but I honestly believe it’s optimal. Of course there’s another path: learn to do something for a living that machines won’t be able to do. But then you face what I call the Burning Building Problem.
Desperate though this all may sound, there is some good news. First of all, you have time. There are still plenty of good jobs out there and they’re not going away tomorrow. New technology takes time to diffuse through the economy, so even if artificial superintelligence were commercially available today it would still take years for the labor market impacts to be broadly felt.
The other bit of good news is that many university professors seem to have gotten over their initial reaction to Ai as a “cheating machine” and now in fact encourage their students to use Ai tools in their work. This means students can become familiar with the technology as they complete their coursework. It doesn’t have to be relegated to clandestine use or nights-and-weekends projects. Plus, many Ai companies offer their products to students at a discount or even free.
And if the Ai future that I predict doesn’t come to pass? Well, you’ll still be among the most highly-skilled and sought-after candidates in the workforce.