AI Future’s Two Jobs – Forbes

It’s no secret that the job market is changing. While not all can be attributed to AI, with globalization and other factors at play, AI is still a massive element and also one whose future impact is unclear. It seems that each subsequent release of a seminal AI model (such as the recently announced open AI O3-PREVIEW), shows AI dominating topics it previously could not, begs the question of how far it can go. In the midst of this, however, evidence is emerging that two classes of jobs (or roles) are thriving with AI, and seem set to thrive more with each successive AI advance. These roles are entrepreneur and researcher.

The effect AI has on roles

To better understand why these two roles benefit, it’s helpful to consider what happens to the job role when AI enters.

• Imagine you are a manager. Your team has a set of deliverables for your organization and a budget to meet them with. You hire people and use tools to fulfill your duties.
• As the tools become more capable with AI, you will have both the ability (and possibly the responsibility) to use the tools to meet the results at a lower cost – which often translates to fewer people being paid salaries. The cheaper the tools get, the more pressure you’ll be under to apply them to offset wages.
• If your organization gives you more results, you may be able to avoid cutting the number of numbers. However, this requires the organization to actively restore results or decide to do more. This is a difficult and slow process for larger companies. It is much easier to keep the same results and ask for the price to be reduced.

For a manager who does not have the authority to “raise the ceiling”, ie. to do more, they will be pressured to work with less. We are seeing a slowdown in hiring that may be due at least in part to this trend.

Entrepreneurs and researchers

What makes entrepreneurs and researchers different? Although these are two very different roles, they have one thing in common. It is easier in these roles to expand your goals as your abilities to achieve improvement. In fact, in both roles, success is measured by your ability to expand. In entrepreneurship, this expansion is measured as company growth. In research, it is measured by solving a larger problem. That being said, as the AI’s capabilities expand (in other words as the floor grows), you can raise your goals (raise the ceiling) by giving the humans in the middle something more to do. Articles like this one and this one show how AI is helping entrepreneurs and researchers get more done by focusing on strategic elements and increasing value as time is freed up from automating routine tasks

So there are only two job types left?

Not at all. First of all, AI-driven transformations are very likely to create new job roles that we cannot yet imagine. Second, even entrepreneur and researcher need not be pure roles. Not everyone will be a solo researcher or solo entrepreneur. Our global ecosystem cannot manage the entire workforce becoming one or the other. It’s more the nature of the role. If your role has some element of these, or your company has some element of these and an organizational structure where that element can move through the layers relatively easily, there are more opportunities within the company to extend their reach to offset the power of the tools, such as thus ensuring that they have value to add as tools become more capable.

Who should I choose?

While many roles are exactly one of these two, there are many more that have elements of one or both. The key is not to look at job ads and search for those two words. The key is to find specific roles within your fields that have elements of at least one of these, as roles allow you to expand your horizons and responsibilities as the tools you use become more powerful. These two roles emphasize the ability to create with tools rather than being a user of tools. This is the element you should look for in a job.

That said, choosing between these two roles is also a matter of personal preference. While both value expanding thought, creativity and problem solving, they do so in very different ways. Researchers are often focused on solving problems at a fundamental level and not always with an eye toward immediate application. Entrepreneurs are focused on creating revenue-generating apps that solve problems. Both require solving hard problems and both add value, but the problems and the value generated are very different. Which one you like will depend on your personal preference.

So how do I become one of them?

The first step is to find out which ones you like personally. Do you enjoy solving tough problems and building on the work of others? Do you enjoy the challenging task of really understanding a customer’s problem and finding a way to solve it that works in the market? Answering these types of questions will help you determine which major is right for you. Again, the key is not necessarily to find a job with that title, but to find a role that has elements of either or both.

Finding the bigger problem

There is always a bigger problem that needs to be solved. In the world of research, it’s usually something new to be found, whether it’s a better understanding of a known problem or a better solution. Entrepreneurship is about expanding business results, whether that’s by helping more customers, building a better product, solving new problems, or more. If your role allows you to expand your horizons and responsibilities, as the tools expand the capability beneath you, you can grow with the tools, not be replaced by them.