Anthropic researchers tell college students how to get ahead in their careers in an AI-obsessed world
The secret to building a career in a world where AI is the main character: Lean into it, say two Anthropic researchers.
In an episode of the "Dwarkesh Podcast" released on Thursday, a pair of the researchers behind Claude — Sholto Douglas and Trenton Bricken — shared three strategies for early careers. They suggested thinking big picture, being lazy, and not letting a previous job stop you from working with AI.
Douglas, who works on reinforcement learning, said everyone should imagine what they want to do, now that AI can help.
"If you had 10 engineers at your beck and call, what would you do?" Douglas said. He added, "What problems, and domains suddenly become tractable? That's the world you want to prepare for."
He suggested that people gain technical depth by studying biology, physics, and computer science and that they think hard about what challenges they want to solve.
Bricken, who researches mechanistic interpretability at the AI company, said college students and young professionals should "be lazier" and outsource more to AI.
"You need to critically think about the things you're currently doing, and what an AI could actually be better at doing, and then go and try it," Bricken said.
The researchers' third piece of advice was about not letting "sunk costs" get in the way. Sunk costs are a concept in which people continue to invest more time and resources because so much has already been spent.
"Whatever kind of specialization that you've done, maybe just doesn't matter that much," Bricken said. "My colleagues at Anthropic are excited about AI. They just don't let their previous career be a blocker."
"It's not as if they were in AI forever," he added.
People across industries are talking about how to AI-proof their careers as AI chatbots and agents become more powerful and capable. The technology is displacing jobs in sectors like software engineering, content creation, and consulting.
Top tech leaders have said all professionals need to think about how AI can improve their workflows.
Last month, Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said people must stop perceiving AI as a "tech thing" and see it as a tool for everyone.
"Within Uber, we're a highly technical company — 30,000 employees — and not enough of my employees know how to use AI constructively," Khosrowshahi said, adding that the company is working to change that.
Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has repeatedly touted the use of AI agents in companies, saying that they will not only change every job but will also secure employment instead of hurting it.
"AIs will recruit other AIs to solve problems. AIs will be in Slack channels with each other, and with humans," Huang said late last year. "So we'll just be one large employee base if you will — some of them are digital and AI, and some of them are biological."
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