00:00The caps and gowns are on, the diplomas are in hand, and yet the boos are ringing out
00:04across commencement stages nationwide, as the class of 2026 makes clear that they are not
00:10buying what Silicon Valley is selling about AI and the future of work. Joining us now to break
00:16this all down is Benjamin Todd, author of 80,000 Hours, How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does
00:22Good. Thank you so much for being here, Benjamin. Thanks so much for having me.
00:26Of course. I mean, these stadium-wide boos erupted at University of Arizona and other campuses
00:32this spring when speakers, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, brought up AI. So
00:37what do these boos tell you about how the class of 2026 is actually feeling as they step into
00:43the workforce for the first time? Yeah, I mean, you can see this in polling
00:48across the United States. AI is really unpopular. And I think to some degree, people are right
00:55to be concerned. We'll probably see more change to the job market in the next 10 years than
01:00we've seen in the whole last generation. Yeah, it seems like there's so much change
01:05coming. And as always with change, people are uncomfortable with it. They maybe don't understand
01:09it. And they're trying to figure out what they're going to do and how AI is really going
01:13to affect them. Your book is literally titled With the Number of Hours in an Average Career,
01:18a number that feels a lot more uncertain to young people right now. So how has your core framework
01:23for thinking about career planning shifted now that AI is really in the picture and here
01:27to stay? Well, it really shifts which skills are going to be most useful for getting a job
01:36and most valuable in the future. And in particular, we should expect that things AI can do well,
01:43AI is good at, are going to become less valued. But that also means that, you know, the money,
01:51the money that would have been spent on those, those skills are going to be spent on something
01:54else. So there's other things that AI can't do yet, will be going up in value. And so as a
02:02job
02:02seeker, you need to be focusing more on those. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's such a good point that it'll
02:07just free up people to do different jobs. But one of the concerns then is what about those entry
02:12level jobs? One analysis suggests that new college graduate unemployment could reach 30%
02:17within two years as AI absorbs, again, those entry level white collar jobs. So is that a scare tactic
02:23or a real possibility? And either way, what should grads then be doing about it right now,
02:28knowing that some changes are happening?
02:32Yeah. And it seems to be, it's especially difficult for young grads because exactly those more
02:37standardized routine white collar analysis type positions seem to be the things that AI is best at
02:43now. Um, and that's undermining the kind of traditional training path that a lot of people
02:49aim to take. And I don't think we quite know what's going to replace it, but, um, one kind
02:58of idea would be to focus on slightly more entrepreneurial type skills. Um, because that is something that AI
03:07is still quite bad at. It's like carrying out a project over many months. Um, and AI is not allowed
03:14to run a company itself. So while at the same time, it's also made it cheap, much cheaper to start
03:19a
03:19new organization or a new nonprofit or a new company. So, um, I think that's an, that is one area
03:25to think
03:26about is like, how could you get small teams of people using AI to do things that in the past
03:32would
03:32have been not economic to do? Yeah. I mean, those entrepreneurial skills are just so important and
03:37you're right now, so readily available, all of these different opportunities for people to start
03:42their own businesses or things like that. But again, I think that a lot of these young people
03:46worry, well, what if I don't have the skills yet that I would have maybe developed to some of those
03:50entry-level jobs. So again, that uncertainty here, I mean, roughly 42% of new students expect AI to have
03:56an influence on their career and whatever career they choose to pursue. And about 10% have already
04:01changed their major because of it with tech and computer science most commonly abandoned. So
04:06are students pivoting in the right direction? Are they running from the wrong things? What's going on
04:10here? It's, it's tricky, but one thing, this has been a trend over the last like several decades is
04:19firstly, it's jobs involving social skills that have actually seen some of the most growth, not STEM
04:25skills. Um, but what's grown even more is jobs that involve both STEM skills and social
04:31skills. And that I think is a bit of a clue that these jobs where you kind of have some
04:38technical
04:38knowledge, but you're able to translate that into solving a real problem. That is a really big
04:43bottleneck. So I wouldn't necessarily say to just like kind of give up on understanding coding, but
04:49it's, it's like, it's the ability to combine that with the social skills or entrepreneurial skills or
04:54understanding of a particular problem that seems like could be some of the most valuable combinations in the
05:00next couple of years. Yeah. That's so interesting that interweaving those skills actually might be
05:05the path forward for a lot of people here. Your book challenges, the old follow your passion advice
05:10as dangerously out of date, especially in the age of AI. So if not passion, what should graduates really
05:16be optimizing for when choosing a career path forward? Is it really just mixing those two types of skills
05:21or what should they be looking for as they move forward?
05:25Well, yeah, our slogan instead is get good at something and then use it to help other people.
05:30So do what contributes. And instead of thinking just what are you passionate about now, think about
05:35how you could build valuable skills, um, using some of the things we've just been just been thinking
05:41about. And then when you build those skills up over time, what can you do with them that's actually
05:45meaningful to you? And how can you use them to get all the other ingredients of a satisfying job?
05:50Because passion is not sufficient for success. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's such a good point
05:55that just having that passion, especially with all of these technological advances is not going to get
05:59you there, but that combination really could. And again, you argue that some careers have hundreds
06:04of times more impact than others, but most people don't really know which ones in a world where AI is
06:09already displacing these entry level roles. So which types of careers are most likely to matter and survive
06:15in the next decade? Again, we're talking about all of these different skills kind of mushed
06:19together, but are there any specific sectors or things that you think people should look at that
06:23you think really will kind of take off as we move forward?
06:27There's nothing that is like safe forever. It's always, it's only just a question of trying to
06:35like, as the key bottleneck moves forward, trying to move with that and focus on what's most valuable
06:42each time. And so that's going to be like a wave moving forward. And yeah, we've talked about social
06:49skills and entrepreneurial skills. I mean, obviously, another big area of things is any job where a
06:55relationship with a particular person or physical presence is inherently part of the job. So
07:03something like nursing, for instance, you would expect to be more resilient and might even grow
07:08because nurses might be able to do things that doctors would have been required to do before.
07:14But instead, a nurse could be using lots of AI advice, which could kind of fill in for that loads
07:21of rote learning that needs to be done in medical school, enable them to do more than they were able
07:26to before. But they still need to be there in person. Yeah, that's such an interesting example
07:32and a good way of kind of thinking outside of the box of okay, where can we actually put our
07:36time that
07:37potentially will be growing instead of shrinking as we move forward. And again, important to think
07:42about what you mentioned there with the flexibility and kind of adaptability as we move forward with
07:46things constantly changing. Now, the booths that were at commencement weren't just about jobs,
07:51right? Students were also voicing anger about AI's environmental costs, racial bias,
07:56who gets rich from it. Is this generation asking the right questions? And how does that broader
08:00frustration fit into your framework of doing good through your career?
08:06Well, I do agree, we could be facing really transformative change from AI,
08:12and that's going to create a lot of risks. And to those, I mean, I would think in some ways,
08:22it could get a lot worse than those types of issues. I mean, the AI companies themselves are
08:28trying to build fully autonomous AI agents. And they're trying to figure out how to get AIs to
08:37improve themselves. So how to automate AI research itself, which could cause progress to suddenly
08:44accelerate even further. So that could be a pretty scary situation if we have all these AI agents,
08:51and then suddenly we get five years of AI progress in one year. That's like a real risk of losing
08:57control. And I think all these risks are really neglected still in terms of the number of people
09:01actually working on them. So I think it's totally justified to be quite concerned about what's happening.
09:09Yeah, and it seems like they really are concerned, as so many of us are, and we'll have to wait
09:13to see
09:14what happens as all of this moves forward. Lastly, for that graduate who just walked off the stage
09:18this spring with their diploma in hand, more anxious than they even are excited perhaps,
09:23what is the single most important mindset shift that your book asks them to make?
09:30I think it's really that mindset shift of what can I actually offer that would help
09:38and would be valued both economically, but also in terms of help, actually helping to tackle these
09:43problems. And yeah, basically trying to think, what can you do to contribute? And that's a difficult
09:53thing to figure out. But then I'd say the second mindset shift is then trying to get out and try
09:59as
09:59trying many things as possible. And no one can easily predict ahead of time what's going to happen,
10:05but you can take an experimental approach. And yeah, try and do the best you can. I mean,
10:10finding a career is difficult at the best of times. And I think it's especially difficult now.
10:15But you can try and find your options and make the best choices between them that you can.
10:20That's very true. Keeping in mind all of that curiosity and adaptability as we move forward so
10:25much to keep our eye on. We really appreciate you being here today. Benjamin Todd, author of 80,000 Hours,
10:30how to have a fulfilling career that does good. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you.
Comments