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“Grduate jobs will disappear” - a common phrase we hear from top AI companies. Its true in some sense that the current LLMs are at the level of a fresher or junior software engineer. However, its very disheartening if you are a student just beginning university to hear such words. What do you study? How do you prepare yourselves for the future? These are questions I’m sure is on the mind of every student in undergrad university right now. Its not just computer science. Graphic design is another one and there will be more to follow as models get better in other sectors. Its just that programming was the easiest to build given the amount of data we had.

However, its not all bad. There is still scope. As companies adopt AI, there will be a need for engineers to build these solutions on top of AI. “AI engineers” is a new role that we see these days. Forward deployed engineers are becoming more common now to implement AI in organizations. Solutions architect is another role. AI researchers are now highly saught after with companies like Meta paying millions of dollars. The point is a cursory check on the kind of roles increasing in companies can help you align your university journey to better prepare. Most importantly, roles never die, they evolve. Companies will need a pipeline to hire junior talent. Otherwise there won’t be any people left on the long run for leadership roles. The skills have changed and its time to adapt. I don’t believe all of this is going to revert. There’s no future where everyone would say stop AI and shut down all LLMs so we can only attempt to solidify our position.

The surge in AI has seen a big boost for the semiconductor industry. Robotics are now on the rise so electronics students have a great window of opportunity to succeed. The ecosystem is huge. To train models, you need chips. The chip making process involves optics and companies like Zeiss hire optics engineers. On similar lines, energy is another big space. Model training needs data centers -> hungry for energy. The current grid system isn’t built for this and capacity is also not sufficient.

Space and defense are going up. The number of opportunities in these sectors have exponentially risen as government spending and VC funding goes up.

Plumbers, electricians, carpenters - these roles will probably have a huge demand. Especially in a country like India where these roles are seen as inferior. There might come a time where they are paid much better than software roles.

Event management for example is a huge space. People have more time now with AI doing some of their work. Smartphone usage has made people more lonely and they long for curated social experiences.

Agriculture is heavily overlooked by the public, but food security under extreme weather and supply shocks is becoming a national security priority. The engineers and biotechnologists who solve these bottlenecks will have high job security and steady funding.

The point being, there is light down the road. All it needs is a few hours of research to align your personal intersts and safeguard your trajectory.

Until death, all defeat is psychological - Marcus Aurelius.

Further reading - McKinsey article on next big arenas of growth

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash