Graduate Smart: Career Advice For The AI Era

Forbes

15-04-2025

Spring has sprung. It's getting warmer. April showers have commenced. Flowers are blooming—and so is all that once-dormant grass. We're fast approaching graduation season. Soon it will be time for all those proud teens on adulthood's cusp to parade across the stage, diplomas in hand.
Only this year feels different. Uncertain.
It's not just the fact that a tariff war is well underway. AI is the underlying cause of so much head scratching and soul searching of late. The national youth charity Onside recently conducted a survey of 1,000 young people ages 8-25 to learn their thoughts on the emerging technology.
The results were stunning.
'Despite research suggesting there will be a 40% increase in demand for jobs requiring AI or machine learning skills in the next five years, the most common feeling towards AI is 'confused,' and when asked if they thought AI would help them to get a job in the future, the majority of young people (68%) answered either no, or that they were unsure.'
Anecdotally, several professor friends have told me their students feel increasingly apprehensive about the future. They wonder what they should major in or if they should go to college at all now that AI is upending the labor market. My own children are still too young to face these types of questions. Still, they worry my wife and me, prompting all kinds of deep conversations. In the spirit of guiding tomorrow's grads, I sat down with Glenn Gow, a CEO success coach and AI strategist on ways to prepare our youth for an unprecedented future.
'When artificial general intelligence (AGI) comes online, a human will be the equivalent of an ant to AI,' Gow told me at the start of our chat, blowing my mind. The obvious reaction to such a statement could be panic. After all, we humans have little problem crushing ants, especially when they pop up uninvited at picnics or find their ways into our homes.
Gow encourages young people to take a different tactic. Embrace AI. Not in a fealty sense to some cognitive overlord but rather as a partner.
I see the wisdom in this approach. A few months ago, I wrote about how properly trained Large Language Models can now enable us to access great thinkers, even if they lived millennia ago through AI Mind Clones. Imagine being able to converse with the late Jack Welch on how to scale your company. Or being able to ask David Ovildy questions about Facebook ads even though 'The Father of Advertising' passed away in 1999.
Yes. But there's more to this story. Gow recommends going beyond using what we might dub digital mental twins for guidance. He suggests leveraging AI as a business mentor. 'What if you had an AI with full access to your knowledge and experiences. Even if it didn't have a complete picture of you, even limited familiarity could still be a game-changer. Trained on you and already possessing a vast database of general information, such a mentor could be the ultimate professional developmental tool.'
For the first time ever, you could benefit from an advisor with an IQ surpassing 300—maybe even 1,000—if we achieve artificial super intelligence (ASI.) The implications are staggering. Your genius mentor would know you inside and out, grok your goals, track your progress, and be able to offer breathtaking personalized guidance—instantly.
No human mentor could ever match that—not even Tony Robbins.
Once activated, your AI mentor—or more likely, mentors—could offer helpful advice, guiding smarter business decisions. They could also assist from a resource standpoint. If they knew you wished to start an online store, they could serve in an agent capacity: sourcing inventory, managing sales, and handling distribution as a start.
'Possessing such AI mentorship won't just make you a smarter, more capable professional. It will make you braver,' says Gow. 'This is because the feedback and insights you receive will be consistently spot on and therefore tremendously empowering.'
Hearing these words, I am reminded of Limitless.
In the film Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), a struggling writer unlocks that 90% of grey matter most humans never access via a mysterious pill. Enjoying a huge intelligence surge, Morra dominates the world, producing and then selling his literary masterpiece, playing the stock market like a champ, and learning martial arts to rival Bruce Lee.
So much off-the-charts competence produces off-the-charts confidence.
This could be our young people's future should they embrace AI partnership. But the benefits don't end there. Tech visionaries like Tim Cortinovis suggest the future belongs to 'companies of one,' as outlined in his book Single-Handed Unicorn: How to Solo Build a Billion-Dollar Company. This isn't so farfetched of an idea when we understand the stunning leverage AI affords individuals willing to embrace such technology with open arms.
To understand why consider this: Until now it required dozens or hundreds of people to build a scalable profitable company. Jim Collins' book From Good to Great once advised business leaders to start with putting the right people in the right seats.
Part of this mental calculus involved determining one's limitations—then hiring a team of individuals possessing such skills. Now along comes AI. Vast computing power can pick up all that slack, making the dream of entrepreneurship ever more accessible. 'Suddenly, you don't need a massive staff or even VC capital. Armed with your own ambition and creativity, you can execute with a small army of AI assistants,' says Gow.
That's not all.
Again, AI can serve as your outsourced mind—much like the advisory council of a Game of Thrones sovereign, complete with a Hand of the King, Master of Whisperers, Master of Coins, the Grand Maester, and more. Analogously, you can imagine a future boardroom where your CFO, CMO, CTO, etc. are all brilliant AIs customized to your style and goals and committed to your success.
You'd be unstoppable.
But only if you embrace the promise of technology. This requires an element of humility previous generations never had to accept—or consider. 'For centuries, we've been the smartest species on earth. But soon, we won't be,' says Gow. 'Remember my ant to human comparison? The resulting psychological shift is massive. It doesn't mean we humans lose our worth—it means we must redefine it.'
Gow isn't doomsaying. He's offering pragmatism: Don't resist inevitability. Play to your human strengths—creativity, curiosity, compassion—then let AI elevate you.
Of course, some young people may dismiss these ideas for any number of reasons. Some might push back on embracing entrepreneurship. That's their right. But it's worth noting another prediction Gow made in this regard. Those young people who don't opt to go into business for themselves—with AI's help—will likely have AI bosses. I don't know about you, but I'd often bristle at my flesh and blood managers as an employee. I can't imagine how much more I might resent an AI who gave me orders.
Again, young people can still opt out. They can go off-grid or avoid tech entirely. But that life is small. And growing smaller. Its opportunities are also rare and few. 'The economy won't hold its breath for nostalgia or sentimentality. It chugs along inexorably,' says Gow.
Knowing all this and seeing what's coming, we still have options. That is the beauty of being human—and young. Moving forward, it seems there are two paths. But it's not between selecting analog versus AI. It's between accepting limitation or embracing potential.
The choice is yours. And so is the world—if you will have it.