Future of Work 2026: The Only Jobs That Will Survive the AI Era

Just this year, more than 100,000 tech workers worldwide have been laid off across companies like Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, and Salesforce.

Amazon alone cut 14,000 corporate roles.

Clariner reduced its staff by nearly 40% as it leaned into guess what? AI.

Dualingo is phasing out human contractors in favor of automation. And

this isn't limited to tech. In the UK, one in six employers now expect AI to reduce their workforce in the next year with junior roles hit first. AI

political turbulence, economic pressure.

Together, they've created what some people are already calling apocalypse.

And here's the paradox. Companies

publicly say, "If we don't adopt AI, we won't exist in 15 years." And at the same time, they're hiring fewer juniors than ever. It really feels to me like

than ever. It really feels to me like this first step of the career ladder is cracking. And if that first step is

cracking. And if that first step is gone, what does that mean for the future work and for the careers of recent graduates? On my podcast, Silicon Valley

graduates? On my podcast, Silicon Valley Girl, I talk to CEOs, investors and founders who are actually hiring people and who are building the AI tools everyone is so anxious about. And you

know, I'm a mom. I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old. I used to worry about my career. Now I'm worried about my daughter's future because it's so unpredictable. And that's one of the

unpredictable. And that's one of the reasons why I do the podcast because I want to hear from those people. I want

to ask my questions as a moment as an immigrant. And in this video, I want to

immigrant. And in this video, I want to bring their insights together and show you which jobs are actually at risk, which careers will grow because of AI,

and what you can do right now to make your career as AI proof as possible.

Let's start with what's really happening to jobs today. When I talk to founders and CEOs, they all say the same thing.

In five years, we will most likely have AGI and there will be massive unemployment. For decades, the life

unemployment. For decades, the life formula was simple. Go to school, get a degree, get a job. Now, the formula is breaking. Education prices keep going

breaking. Education prices keep going up. But graduate job openings in some

up. But graduate job openings in some countries are down by 40%. So, if the job market feels like a closed door, it's not because you're doing something

wrong. The system is preparing people

wrong. The system is preparing people for a world that does not exist anymore.

And here's how Daniel Priestley, a British entrepreneur and founder, describes this gap.

>> It's both. It's the easiest and the worst time. So is there's more money

worst time. So is there's more money than ever before. There's more

opportunities than ever before. You can

reach global markets faster than ever before. So in theory, it should be the

before. So in theory, it should be the easiest time. The reason it's not the

easiest time. The reason it's not the easiest time is because our schooling system is rooted in the industrial age and it's built around getting people ready for factories and offices that no

longer exist really. So the the reason that so many people are struggling is because they went through this arduous training day after day after day for 12 15 years preparing them for an

industrialized economy. And when they

industrialized economy. And when they get out there all of these skills make them very functional. But now we have automation and outsourcing.

>> Yeah. And it's like great, we trained you as a large language model that's not as good as the the current version.

>> Yeah.

>> Teaching people to do functional work that can be automated or outsourced way faster, way cheaper, way easier.

Especially in the west, you are not only in competition with the technology, you're also in competition with someone who's armed with the same technology in a country where you can live pretty large on half the price.

>> Yeah. So the question isn't do I have a degree anymore? The real questions are,

degree anymore? The real questions are, can I solve ambitious problems end to end employing those AI tools? Can AI

actually 10x my output? Can I do something beyond what a model and a cheaper freelancer could do together?

And that leads us to the next part.

Which jobs are actually in danger and why? When people ask which jobs will AI

why? When people ask which jobs will AI replace, they expect to hear coders, designers, maybe copyriters. But the

reality is more nuanced and in some ways more scary. So I asked perplexity to

more scary. So I asked perplexity to analyze my portfolio.

>> Okay.

>> And I asked it whether I should fire my financial advisor and it was like yes you should do this immediately. Like

that that's the first time I saw something >> that definitive from AI like what's going to happen to these professions financial advisors real estate brokers >> because perplexity does it now and it created the whole strategy for me to

rebalance and everything. getting the

listings on like Redin or Zillow with like a comet like browser or say you just have a recurring task that's running doesn't work yet but it's going to work pretty soon which is you could

just have a task that says you know everyday morning just look at all the new listings on Red Fin uh have something like every time there's a house below a certain budget uh and and

that's within this neighborhood make sure to like send me a push notification uh and and submit an application on my behalf and schedule a meeting for a visit. you have access to my calendar,

visit. you have access to my calendar, everything you can you can.

>> So, just take >> So, if your agent only shows you listings on Redin and Zillow, I I think they're useless. But if your agent is

they're useless. But if your agent is doing offmarket deals for you, they're still pretty useful because those things do not exist on the web.

>> Okay.

>> I feel like having the power of like intelligence and computer at your hands, it always comes back to that means you can push uh the existing industry to like like work harder for you. Uh same

thing with private wealth management or financial advisors like what are if the job of the financial advisor to tell you like what stocks to buy then I don't think they're not going to be smarter than perplexity which you can go and

summon and and ask it to go read all the uh analyst reports in every stock and like all the morning day news and like come back to you and tell you like the impact on your portfolio. Uh what would

Warren Buffett do if he had exact exactly your portfolio? like like it can answer questions like that that no financial advisor can.

>> But if your financial advisor does more stuff for you like getting you some access to uh certain funds like private equity or hedge funds or or access to

like funds or citadel or like some startups, venture capital which you cannot get through uh just the public markets then maybe they're useful, right?

>> Clear pattern shows up. AI is not killing entire professions. It's killing

the shallow version of those professions. A lawyer who just rewrites

professions. A lawyer who just rewrites templates, that's easy to automate. A

financial adviser who just picks a few mutual funds from a list, also easy to replace. Um, you can already do that

replace. Um, you can already do that with perplexity. A real estate agent who

with perplexity. A real estate agent who only sends you Zillow links, you don't need a human for that. But a lawyer who negotiates, strategizes, and builds deep trust with clients, very valuable. An

adviser who gets you into deals you can't Google. Oh my god. Yes, please. An

can't Google. Oh my god. Yes, please. An

agent who finds offmarket properties and navigates messy human situations. Oh my

god. Yes, I've been through that. I

relied on my person. I just talked to someone who runs a nonprofit helping students from low-income families apply to colleges. And she actually sees how

to colleges. And she actually sees how AI is helping them because because prior to AI, one tutor could only help a few students. Now one tutor is helping

students. Now one tutor is helping hundreds of students and because AI can answer a lot of generic questions and she highlighted that they still need humans there to motivate people. And

this is why uh students from those low-income families come to her nonprofit because they need that support. They need a human to tell them

support. They need a human to tell them you can do it. You're worth it. You can

apply to that college. And it was super important to me when I was applying to colleges when somebody from Education USA told me you can do it. And yes, I could Google a lot of things myself, but I can't Google motivation. What I'm

saying here is that AI isn't replacing law or finance or real estate as fields.

It is replacing job descriptions that are too basic. And that's exactly why so many people decide to build their own thing instead of fighting for one of those shrinking roles. Before we go deeper, I want to pause here for a

moment. Whenever I talk to founders or

moment. Whenever I talk to founders or creators, one thing keeps coming up. As

AI reshapes the job market, more people are choosing to build their own thing.

startup service, a personal brand, and even in an AI world where a search is completely different now, you still need a place where your work lives, a website or a page that shows what you do and one

that both your customers and their AIs can actually find. Oh my god, I can't believe I've been saying that. But yes,

AI is now making a lot of purchasing decisions. And the challenge is if you

decisions. And the challenge is if you ever try to register good.com, you know the struggle. Most great names are

the struggle. Most great names are already taken or cost a fortune. That's

why I was really excited when I found aonline domains. It's the world's second

aonline domains. It's the world's second largest new domain extension trusted by over 3.5 million businesses and online is such a strong keyword. It's searched

more than 500 million times every month which actually helps you grow site rank higher. What I love about online is how

higher. What I love about online is how universal it is. It works for freelancers, creators, AI startups, anyone who needs a clean professional digital home. Even platforms like Skill

digital home. Even platforms like Skill Up use it. And one of my favorite examples, the classic Mindeeper, the game a lot of you guys spend hours playing, now lives at mindepeeper.online.

mindepeeper.online.

And because.com is so crowded, doonline gives you room to get the name you actually want without weird numbers or dashes. So if you're building an AI

dashes. So if you're building an AI product, launching a side project, or finally creating your own portfolio, now is the perfect moment to grab your domain. And for a limited time, you can

domain. And for a limited time, you can get a online domain for just 99 cents for the first year with my link and coupon code. Just go to www.get.online

coupon code. Just go to www.get.online

or use the code from the description and secure your name today. So, let's look at the job loss problem at a different angle. Let's say you already have a

angle. Let's say you already have a pretty good job and you like it and it's interesting. You're inside the company.

interesting. You're inside the company.

You see all these changes and you're thinking, "Okay, how do I not get replaced by the next wave of tools?" I

asked my guests what they're doing with their own teams right now. there's still

higher value work to do.

>> So, they're still in the companies.

>> They're still in the companies and there's still work to be done. Like

everything's elevating, but what we discovered is that there's this there's this ability to pull the scalable element out and address a market that was never even being addressed.

>> So, it's not like you're replacing people, it's more of you're elevating them.

>> There's definitely an element of replacing people. Um, and that is

replacing people. Um, and that is because there are always these jobs that are repetitive, functional, annoying, frustrating jobs that we can actually

replace. There are some people who say,

replace. There are some people who say, "I don't want to elevate up." And

unfortunately, there's not much I can do if you don't want to elevate. If you

don't want to play at the higher game, I'm moving fast. So, you've got to either elevate towards that or find something else.

>> Yeah, this is basically the new contract at work. AI takes the boring repeatable

at work. AI takes the boring repeatable tasks. human move up to higher value

tasks. human move up to higher value problems. If you refuse to move up, you eventually move out. And big tech CEOs are thinking the exact same way.

>> We see big companies put a stop on hiring and they say like, "Hey, to their employees, you need to figure out how to do this with AI first before we hire someone." What do you think about that?

someone." What do you think about that?

I think it's a reflection of you know a fast changing market and a lot of uncertainty uh both you know in the political uh uh environment and in the tech environment of where things are

going and the natural tendency to do is to go slower a little bit. Um, and you may might decide, you know, some people are no longer the right folks in my company for that kind of environment

where things are moving incredibly fast, where you're almost forced to use AI to keep up with the competition. Like the

realization I think that many companies had in the last few months is that if we have employees that say we don't want to use AI, that ultimately means up we as a company are no longer set up for success

because our competitors are all using AI or they're mandating AI. And I think this is the transition phase we're going through. You know, things like Mark

through. You know, things like Mark Zuckerberg uh getting the scale scale AI team.

I I think that shows where Mark's head is and where he believes the future is going to be. He's going he's willing to invest into it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, if you already have a job, your number one goal is very simple. Become the person who knows how

simple. Become the person who knows how to do your job with AI, not in spite of it. And if you're a manager and you're

it. And if you're a manager and you're watching this, another meaningful thing I took away from a conversation with this lady who runs this nonprofit helping students apply to colleges. And

when she was introducing this AI tool, she was talking to her team, she told them to focus on the problem that they're solving with this tool because that tool allowed her team to spend

their limited amount of time on actually encouraging students to apply and motivating them versus answering generic questions. So in order to become a

questions. So in order to become a person who knows how to do their job with AI, you can start with really easy practical exercise. Ask yourself what

practical exercise. Ask yourself what are the three most repetitive things I do every week? Is it writing emails, making reports, doing research, cleaning

data? Then build a tiny AI system around

data? Then build a tiny AI system around each one. This can be prompts, small

each one. This can be prompts, small automations, agents, very basic, anything that saves time. I really like spaces and perplexity. feel like I have a space for my high cholesterol. I have

a space for guests that I'm researching.

And then you just notice how you save 30 to 50% of your time on that repetitive stuff. I don't type my emails anymore. I

stuff. I don't type my emails anymore. I

just talk to chat GPT and it writes my emails. So keep asking myself, what

emails. So keep asking myself, what higher level work can I move to? Where

is this highest ROI? Where should I invest more time in? And where should I delegate to AI? That's how you move from replaceable task doer to irreplaceable

operator. That brings us to one of my

operator. That brings us to one of my favorite questions. My daughters are

favorite questions. My daughters are four and six and I always ask entrepreneurs, what skills should our kids learn for this new world? And

honestly, the answer is very similar for them and for us. Generally speaking, AI don't suggest waiting because part of what you want to be doing, you know, just like any new technological

revolution, whether when YouTube was happening, when the internet's happening, the folks who go and adopt and play with it early then have a differential edge in the change that it

means in the industry, in their society.

And so even though three years from now the coding tools will be and agents will be much better than they are now the people who started playing with them now will probably be the people who know how

to use them and deploy them much more comfortably early.

>> So what do you think uh parents should be teaching their kids now? I think it's still important to be good at like learning knowledge from first principles yourself and not depending on the sort

of AI tutor leading you through. Like I

think one of the most important things is from school is the discipline of being able to teach yourself. That's a

meta skill >> and that you know that that comes with friction. So I think as a parent you

friction. So I think as a parent you still have to introduce like discipline and friction into the process because if it comes all too slowly and it's always on tap you know then the then there's a

risk that the child could just get used to having everything instantly available and doesn't learn from the hard work um you know the benefits of hard work which I think are important. So that's like something to think through now that

everything is going to be so seamless.

Then I asked the founder of Replet, Amjad, what he's teaching his own kids because he's an immigrant and his kids are the same age as mine.

>> When I'm thinking about my kids and what we're going to do in the future, I think about this idea of being more of a polymath, right? Like if you think

polymath, right? Like if you think about, you know, even before the industrial revolution, the people that are most memorable, uh, like Leonardo da

Vinci, for example, did a lot of things.

was an engineer, was an artist, was all sorts of things, right? And the the kind of elite education used to be about understanding a lot of things about spending a lot of time learning about

every everything. And I think this is

every everything. And I think this is where the education needs to be headed where the industrial revolution created a world where humans are treated like

machines. If you think about

machines. If you think about corporations or factories, factories are one big machine and every individual person kind of doing the assembly of one

thing is a part and I think it was very dehumanizing and I think we're going to go back to a to a moment of time uh where there's a lot more opportunities

for entrepreneurship. Even when you join

for entrepreneurship. Even when you join a company, you're you're going to be judged by how much of a real business impact you're going to have as opposed

to how task oriented you are.

>> The new AI age wants you to be what researchers call a human epoch. Someone

who brings the five abilities AI still can't replicate. Empathy, presence,

can't replicate. Empathy, presence, opinion or ethics, creativity, and hope slash leadership. And these aren't soft

slash leadership. And these aren't soft skills anymore. Let me give you a simple

skills anymore. Let me give you a simple example. Two people can both use chat

example. Two people can both use chat GPT to write a report, but only one of them can walk into a meeting and read the room, understand why a client is

nervous, understand what could be a hesitation, reframe the problem when the model's answer isn't enough, make a judgment call when the data conflicts,

inspire the team to move forward. That

combination, human psychology plus AI fluency is what companies are paying a premium for. And then there is something

premium for. And then there is something most people still underestimate.

Personal brand.

>> Personal brand is going to matter even more, a lot more because personal brands get 20 times the cut through as business brands when you're trying to get attention. But it's going to be nearly

attention. But it's going to be nearly impossible to build a personal brand.

Imagine a scenario where there's an airport and there are planes that are on the ground and there are planes that are already up in the air and the fog comes rolling in and the air traffic control

says if you're already on the ground it's too foggy you can't take off but if you're up in the air you can keep flying. That's what's going to happen to

flying. That's what's going to happen to personal brands. So new personal brands

personal brands. So new personal brands are going to be harder and harder to get through the fog. Existing personal

brands will be already up in the air. I

think there's probably two to three years where you've still got time to build a personal brand. I think one of the greatest assets anyone can build right now is a dedicated following of

two to 20,000 people who know who you are. They they get you. Doesn't have to

are. They they get you. Doesn't have to be millions, but if there's 2 to 20,000 people out there on your LinkedIn, on your Instagram, on your YouTube channel, whatever it is, they feel like they've

met you or know you, they've got a parasocial relationship to you. If

you've got two to 20,000 people out there who have that parasocial relationship with you, that is going to be one heck of an asset to have.

>> In a world where AI can generate infinite content, people follow people.

Your edge is a mix of AI fluency. You

know how to use tools better than 90% of your peers. Polymath skills. You can

your peers. Polymath skills. You can

connect dots across fields and ship real things. Personal brand. None of that

things. Personal brand. None of that requires permission from a recruiter, but it does require something old-fashioned learning. And no, we're not all about

learning. And no, we're not all about retiring at 30, but how we work is changing fast. Instagram co-founder Mike

changing fast. Instagram co-founder Mike Kger described it perfectly when he talked about Claude and AI agents. What

do you think is going to happen in two or three years? How we're going to progress in advance? I think part of it and I was having this conversation this morning even with some of our our researchers um the the progression or

the the dynamic that I see is um if last year maybe the beginning of this year um these models and I'll use Claude as the example were really kind of uh assistants that were helping you with

maybe a question at a time or maybe a task right um this year they're moving more into collaborators where um especially if you watch somebody use um cloud code for example they're actually

delegating what would have taken them maybe 20, 30 minutes and Claude's going off and doing it and then you're checking in and you're more on the sort of validating or verifying work, right?

Going into next year, you're going to delegate even bigger chunks of time or even like pieces of the job out to that.

So, it's not just I have this very specific thing, please go do it. And it

could be more sort of think of it, Claude, as something that's in the loop of your business. So, hey Claude, um, watch for any new user feedback and maybe propose a change based on that.

And you can imagine evolving that. don't

just propose a change, write the code to make the change and I'll check if it's a good idea or not. Um, and then the next step there is Claude actually being an entire sort of co-orker where it has a

discipline. So, not just a project that

discipline. So, not just a project that happens to be a good thought partner for product management, but an actual product manager in your company.

>> This for me is the blueprint of AI proof careers. You work with models that see

careers. You work with models that see patterns better than any human ever could, and you bring the things that absolutely can't. judgment, taste,

absolutely can't. judgment, taste, ethics, lived experience, emotional support. In other words, you become the

support. In other words, you become the translator between messy human reality and superhuman AI systems. With all these tools, it's natural to ask, do we

even need formal education? I asked

Perplexity CEO Aravent if he'd still do a PhD today. And what hit tell an 18-year-old starting from scratch.

>> The fundamental thing you learn in a PhD is learning to learn. Like I I did a lot of research in my PhD which doesn't matter today but I got the ability to like go learn a new topic dig deep

understand everything gather my information consult like whoever is the best uh expert which by the way is not needed anymore because you have tools like perplexity subject expertise to go

make decisions and like you know branch out that is what you acquire that skill zoom out and think beyond materialistic goals like just foundationally as a

person you become a lot more grounded in like the the willingness to seek truth, the relentless questioning, the socratic method of learning uh and uh learning to learn

>> uh and and and I feel like these three qualities are like like reflective of this proverb or phrase, right? Like give

a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Like that's how I feel about

lifetime. Like that's how I feel about PhD. So, no, you do not need a PhD to

PhD. So, no, you do not need a PhD to succeed in AI. But you do need the thing a good education was always supposed to give you. The ability to learn fast, the

give you. The ability to learn fast, the ability to ask better questions, to go deep when everyone else is just skimming. AI makes it easier than ever

skimming. AI makes it easier than ever to access knowledge. It does not replace your responsibility to actually use it.

So, let's put this all together. Yes,

entry-level jobs are disappearing. Yes,

simple repeatable work is becoming less valuable even if it's intellectual. The

people actually building this future keep saying the same thing. This is both the hardest and the best time to build your career. If you want to be on the

your career. If you want to be on the winning side of this shift, here's a simple plan you can start this month.

Something real, something doable. Step

number one, learn to work with AI, not around it. Write down the tasks you

around it. Write down the tasks you repeat every week. Reports, re research, emails, content, and keep iterating.

Don't stop there. Build AI workflows for them using Chad GPT, Perplexity, Cloud.

Keep trying those new tools. Your goal

is to cut the time in half for just three to five tasks in the next 30 days and put it into your CV or LinkedIn.

Reduced X task by 50% using AI workflows. That's a language hiring

workflows. That's a language hiring managers understand. Step number two, go

managers understand. Step number two, go deep in one area. Then expand. Pick a

field and commit to one full year of uncomfortable depth. courses, side

uncomfortable depth. courses, side projects, real work you can show. After

that, add an adjacent skill. A marketer

who codes, a doctor who understands AI, a designer who knows data. That's how

you go from task doer to someone who actually moves the business. And then

step number three, build a small but real personal brand. We've hired some people recently and most of them came because my COO followed them on LinkedIn. She liked their way of

LinkedIn. She liked their way of thinking. She liked their experience.

thinking. She liked their experience.

She reached out on LinkedIn. We were not chasing people with million followers, just a couple thousand people who know what you're good at. Post once or twice a week about what you're learning,

building, and improving. Share

experiments, share case studies, and numbers. Document the journey instead of

numbers. Document the journey instead of waiting to feel ready. So, to wrap this up, the future work isn't humans versus AI, it's humans plus AI. And the gap between those who adapt and those who

don't is getting wider every month. If

you want me to break down specific AI workflows for your job or industry, tell me what you do in the comments. I might

make a whole video around it. And if

this helped you feel a little less apocalypse and a little more okay, I actually have a plan. Hit the like button so that more people can see this video. Your career is not over. It's

video. Your career is not over. It's

just in beta and you're the one shipping the next version. Thank you so much and I'll see you very soon on this channel.

Bye.