AI with Kyle Daily Update 189: Gen Z and AI

The kids booed the AI speech. Good!

Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, went on stage at the University of Arizona and told graduates AI was going to shape the world. They booed him. Repeatedly.

Here’s the full vid (2 mins):

The future arrived early, it brought layoffs, fewer junior roles, AI job descriptions, student debt, and a bunch of tech executives saying "isn't this exciting?" to the exact people getting the worst end of the deal…

So yeah. Boo away. I get it.

But Schmidt's actual message was not completely stupid. That's the annoying bit. And why you should watch it.

According to AP's reporting, he acknowledged the fear in the room. Machines coming, jobs evaporating, future already written, all the cheery graduation stuff. Then he still basically said: AI is here, get on the rocket ship, shape it instead of pretending it isn't happening.

And on the practical point, I think he's probably right.

But the room heard a guy who helped build the tech economy telling graduates the next version of the tech economy will be fine if they just embrace it. While they are entering the worst entry-level market in years. Basically telling them to shut up and get with the programme.

Yeesh.

Woz Was Warmer

Steve Wozniak gave the nicer version.

At Grand Valley State University, Woz (Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple) talked about AI as "actual intelligence". Human judgment. Curiosity. Creativity. Ideas.

Unsurprisingly Woz got cheers instead of boos.

The kind of line that lands in a room full of graduates because it says: you still matter.

Lovely! And I mean that sincerely. I much prefer Woz's framing to the usual "disrupt or be disrupted" LinkedIn rubbish.

But actual intelligence needs somewhere to go. If you have judgment but no job, curiosity but no client, creativity but no route into the work, all that intelligence becomes frustration.

Actual intelligence without opportunity becomes frustration.

All that wasted potential. With nowhere to go.

They Are Not Anti-AI. They Don't Trust The Deal.

Gen Z are not anti-AI in some simple neo-Luddite way. They use the tools. They know the tools matter. They just don't trust the deal being offered by the people selling them.

Gallup says 51% of US Gen Z use generative AI at least weekly. HEPI says 95% of UK undergraduates use AI in at least one way, and 94% use generative AI to help with assessed work.

So no, this is not "young people hate AI"… that’s too simplistic (and the data doesn’t support it).

It's more subtle: "young people use AI and can still see the bargain is dodgy."

Honestly this is extremely fair. Gen Z aren’t thick. They realise that this stuff is going to absolutely demolish their job opportunities, their income potentials, their ability to get ahead in life. It’s hard already and not going to get better. And these new graduates are smart enough to see that this deal absolutely sucks for them.

The Boring Work Was The Training.

AI is not always taking jobs in the cartoon way people imagine.

It is not that Sandra comes into work on Tuesday and there is a chatbot in her chair.

The “AI took my job” narrative is midwit. That’s not mechanism.

The more insidious version is this: the company just doesn't create the junior role.

It’s not that AI takes jobs. AI stops new jobs being created.

No new assistant. No junior analyst. No trainee researcher. No first support hire. No entry-level legal grunt work. The work still exists, but now it gets swallowed by AI, or by a senior person using AI to do the work of 10 juniors.

That sounds efficient. And it is. Corporations will save money in the short term.

It also breaks the ladder. Because the boring grunt work was still training. Drafting, research, QA, admin, support, legal discovery, junior analysis - all the stuff everyone complained about was also where you learned the job. You did the rubbish bits, slowly became useful, proved you might maybe know what you are doing, then moved up.

The shitty bits were necessary for that progression. And they are being stripped out of organisations. Revelio Labs found entry-level roles requiring some college are down over 35% since January 2023. Highly AI-exposed entry-level roles are down over 40%.

Now you might ask if the first rung goes missing, where exactly are the next senior people supposed to come from? GREAT question. And one that companies don’t care about for the most part. That’s a problem a few years down the line - and as long as exec’s pay is tied to quarterly and annual goals they ain’t going to be thinking about the wider consequences here.

As an aside there’s one country where this is less of a problem, one country that is very good at thinking on longer time scales…你已经知道是哪个国家了! 😆 

New AI Jobs Don't Solve The First-Rung Problem.

The obvious response is: "AI will create new jobs."

Sure. It will!

AI operations. Automation specialist. Workflow designer. AI trainer. Tooling lead. Pick your title. Chuck "agentic" in there and add 20 grand to the salary, thank you very much here’s the invoice.

But those jobs are not automatically first jobs. Most of them require knowing an industry before you automate it. The person who can design a useful finance workflow usually knows finance. The person who can build a legal review process usually understands legal work. The person who can automate operations has normally sat inside operations and watched the mess up close.

That's brilliant if you are 35 and already have a decade of context.

Less useful if you are 22 and trying to get a foot in the door.

And there is a second issue. This is the first technological shift where the new roles can also be done, or at least heavily squeezed, by the technology creating them.

Workflow design? AI is quite good at workflows. AI training? AI can generate synthetic training data. Operations? Agents love operations.

The AI can make the new roles. And immediately take them. It did after all design the work. So it knows exactly what needs to be done.

Gulp.

So "new jobs will appear" is not enough. A new job is not automatically a new ladder, especially for the young.

The Old Deal Is Gone.

This is why new grads booing tech execs is rational.

The old promise was simple: get a degree, get a job, climb the ladder. It was never perfect. Plenty of people got stitched up by it. But it was at least a recognisable path.

Now the path is fuzzier…

A degree is still useful, but it is not a guarantee. Shit, it might burden you with $100k of debt too which makes life harder. You’re not starting from 0. You are immediately digging yourself out of a hole.

A job is still great, but it is not obviously low risk. A career ladder might exist, but the bottom part may have been quietly removed.

The Guardian recently wrote about Gen Z turning to entrepreneurship because the entry-level route is getting so grim. That does not mean everyone needs to become a startup founder. Please don't. Most startups are misery with swish pitch decks.

But more people probably do need some kind of income they control.

Client work. A tiny service. A niche automation. A small product. A portfolio that proves you can create value before anyone gives you permission.

Not as glamorous. Not going to get you on the front over of WIRD. Or into Forbes 30 under 30 (which is a ticket straight to jail anyway!). No: we don’t need all the trappings of “entrepreneurship”. That’s mastubatory.

We need an income to live the life we want to live. That’s it.

And AI can take that from us.

Or give it to us.

Keep Options Open.

I don't have a neat solution to this. Nobody does. Shit, anyone saying they do are lying.

Governments are too slow. Universities are behind. Employers are optimising for this quarter. Tech companies are racing because if they don't, someone else will. All true, all grim.

So the personal answer has to be practical.

Learn the tools. Build proof. Stay useful. Keep options open. Own something if you can. A website. A client list. A small product. A portfolio. A workflow. A distribution channel. Something that is yours.

BUILD. Get to it.

If you're Gen Z, I wouldn't assume the nine-to-five is the safe option anymore. It might be. In some industries it still will be. But as a default life strategy? No bueno.

And if you're older, don't sit there smugly either. You have the context advantage right now. That is useful. Use it. Build with it. Teach with it. Package it. Because the window where experience plus AI gives you an unfair edge is open now, and it may not stay open forever.

AI is moving its way up the chain. You can’t wait for it to catch up.

Woz was right that actual intelligence matters. AND the students were right to boo.

Boo the speech. Then build anyway.

Just booing is not going to help you.

To the Task,

Kyle