From world leaders and politicians to AI researchers and tech CEOs, it seems like everyone believes AI will completely decimate the global job market in the near future. For anyone paying attention to what has been happening in recent years in both AI and robotics, it's hard to argue otherwise. Most jobs as we know them today will likely cease to exist. The question isn't really whether it will happen anymore. The question is what you're supposed to do about it.

A lot of people are asking the wrong questions. I hear some version of "what careers would be safe from AI" all the time. I'm not sure anyone really knows. And I think focusing on which jobs survive misses the bigger picture entirely.

I have some thoughts.

First, let's acknowledge the uncomfortable reality. AI is advancing insanely fast and continues to accelerate at unprecedented speeds. Even the people behind many of the leading AI systems do not fully understand how they work. Nobody really knows what comes next. But there are very good reasons to believe the job market will be significantly impacted, and I think it's worth planning as if it will be.

So what are your options? You could wait for governments to step in with new policies or you could hope for something like universal basic income. I don't like either of those because, as individuals, we have no control over them. I'd rather focus on things I can actually control.

Why Upskilling Alone Won't Save Us

The popular answer right now is upskilling. Get trained to work alongside AI, learn the right tools, and you'll stay relevant. I hear this from influencers, tech leaders, investors. Basically everyone with a platform and an opinion.

I'm a firm believer that AI is a force multiplier. It will absolutely help people become more productive. But the idea that simply getting people to upskill will somehow save the job market at scale is idealistic, if not naive.

Think about what a force multiplier actually means. A customer support team of fifty people can probably be reduced to five people using AI tools effectively. Those five people are more productive than ever, but forty-five people still lost their jobs. The company didn't hire more people because the existing team got more efficient. They hired fewer. That's what a force multiplier does. It multiplies the output of the people who remain. It doesn't create more seats at the table.

Or look at software engineering. AI can now generate, review, and debug code at a level that would have seemed impossible just a couple of years ago. Companies are already adjusting their hiring plans around this. Learning to use AI-assisted development tools is absolutely a smart move if you're an engineer today, but it doesn't guarantee there will be as many engineering jobs tomorrow. The tools are improving faster than people can upskill to use them.

Don't get me wrong, learning to use AI will be a non-negotiable skill going forward. But the premise that acquiring the right skills will ensure you're qualified for a job only works if those jobs still exist. Nobody, not even the people doing the hiring at companies today, can tell you what will make you more desirable in two years, or whether the role you're training for will still be around. You simply have no control over how that future gets written.

The Real Opportunity

Here's what I think we should be talking about instead.

Rather than betting everything on staying employable in someone else's system, we should be empowering people to build things for themselves. Not just developers or founders. Everyone. The person with an idea for a small business. The person who sees a problem in their industry that nobody else is solving. The person who lost their job and is wondering what comes next.

There has never been a better time in history to try. What used to require a team of engineers, designers, and significant capital can increasingly be done by a single person with the right tools and enough determination. A few years ago, if you had an idea for a product, you were looking at months of work and at least tens of thousands of dollars in development costs before you could even test whether anyone wanted it. That barrier has dropped dramatically, and it's continuing to fall.

But what most people miss is that AI shouldn't just help you code something or write marketing copy. The real opportunity is AI that helps across the entire journey. Validation, research, design, engineering, marketing, strategy. All of it. Not just one piece. The reason most ideas never make it off the ground isn't because people lack ambition. It's because the path from idea to reality asks you to figure out too many things at once, and most people don't know where to start.

That's the part that needs to change. When you put the right tools in people's hands and help them across the full journey, not just one narrow slice, they'll go further than anyone predicted. I've seen this play out over and over throughout my career. The bottleneck has never been a shortage of good ideas or capable people. It's been access. Access to the right tools, the right knowledge, and the ability to actually execute.

More People Deserve a Real Shot

This isn't just about tech. It's about creating small businesses, automating niche workflows that you understand better than anyone, building tools that serve a market you're already a part of. The people best positioned to build these things aren't necessarily engineers or entrepreneurs. They're the people closest to the problems.

A teacher who knows exactly what's broken about classroom management software. A nurse who sees the gap in patient communication tools. A small business owner who can't find an affordable solution for something everyone in their industry needs. These are the people with ideas worth building, and they've historically been locked out of the process because the barrier to entry was too high.

AI is changing that equation, and I think we're dramatically underestimating what happens when you give more people a real shot at bringing their ideas to life.

A Bet on Human Ambition

I'll be honest. I'm not just writing about this. I'm actively building toward this future. I'm working on something that I believe will help lower the barrier for people to go from idea to reality, across the entire journey, not just one piece of it. I'm not ready to share the details yet, but the work is deeply personal to me. I've spent my career building tools that give people access to things they didn't have before, and this is the most important version of that I've ever worked on.

Building and launching ideas into the world has always been difficult and overwhelming. But it doesn't have to be as hard as it used to be. For the first time, maybe ever, we have the opportunity to lower that barrier enough that anyone, anywhere, regardless of their background, can truly try. I'm not going to pretend this is a silver bullet. Not every idea works. Not everyone will succeed. But between waiting for governments to figure it out, hoping your current skillset stays relevant, or taking a shot at building something of your own, I know which one I'd pick.

The future is uncertain. That's not going to change. But I'm making a bet on human ambition. On the idea that, given the opportunity and the right tools, people will surprise you with what they can create. I'd love to see people put more ideas out into the world. And I'd love nothing more than to give people more control over their destiny. There's something incredible and beautiful about a world where more people get to try. More ideas out there means more problems get solved, more things get built, and more people find their thing. It's a future we should all aspire to.