Surviving the AI Jobpocalypse: Learning From Matt Shumer
We are not only getting bracketed by crazy geopolitical changes, the biggest driver in my opinion is technology. And as a participant in the tech industry for over 26 years now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. And this will have major shocks to our society. AI is like nothing we have ever seen before and the impacts on white collar jobs will be what technology and globalization did to blue collar jobs and our industrial base since the 1980s. Communities across America have never recovered from this.
AI is the new automation.
This time technology is coming for college educated white collar jobs: lawyers, accountants, analysts, programmers, roles previously seen as safe. The cognition class is in deep trouble. I’m not saying there won’t be white collar jobs. There will still be need for lawyers and accountants, just a lot less of them. Only the top 10-20%. With AI, the bar will be so much higher that only the best of the best will have these jobs. Anyone average or mediocre, which is most people sadly, will be in deep doo doo. It’s gonna be bad. The CEO of Anthropic has even publicly stated that he believes that 50% of entry level white collar jobs will be eliminated by AI in the next 5 years. He is well placed to know.
Gavin Purcell mentioned a term called AI Takeoff. “AI takeoff is the moment (or period of time) where AI models begin to improve much faster than ever before, mostly because they can work on themselves.” Basically this thing is gonna grow to levels we will not expect. Not sure if we are there yet but we could be close. There is a good write up here:
Matt Shumer, who is an investor and operator in the AI space wrote a long X article on AI too and it’s excellent:
https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/202125698987610940
Basically, he writes that AI development and effectiveness is growing at an exponential rate. Society and most people have no idea what’s coming and how fast it is coming. But it’s not too late to prepare. Ignoring it will not help you and your family. Panic doesn’t help either. I preach: control the controllables. You can take action to prepare for the Age of AI. I took some recommendations from him and recapped the most important ones I found here:
“1. Get your financial house in order. I’m not a financial advisor, and I’m not trying to scare you into anything drastic. But if you believe, even partially, that the next few years could bring real disruption to your industry, then basic financial resilience matters more than it did a year ago. Build up savings if you can. Be cautious about taking on new debt that assumes your current income is guaranteed. Think about whether your fixed expenses give you flexibility or lock you in. Give yourself options if things move faster than you expect.
2. Think about where you stand, and lean into what’s hardest to replace. Some things will take longer for AI to displace. Relationships and trust built over years. Work that requires physical presence. Roles with licensed accountability: roles where someone still has to sign off, take legal responsibility, stand in a courtroom. Industries with heavy regulatory hurdles, where adoption will be slowed by compliance, liability, and institutional inertia. None of these are permanent shields. But they buy time. And time, right now, is the most valuable thing you can have, as long as you use it to adapt, not to pretend this isn’t happening.
3. Your dreams just got a lot closer. I’ve spent most of this section talking about threats, so let me talk about the other side, because it’s just as real. If you’ve ever wanted to build something but didn’t have the technical skills or the money to hire someone, that barrier is largely gone. You can describe an app to AI and have a working version in an hour. I’m not exaggerating. I do this regularly. If you’ve always wanted to write a book but couldn’t find the time or struggled with the writing, you can work with AI to get it done. Want to learn a new skill? The best tutor in the world is now available to anyone for $20 a month... one that’s infinitely patient, available 24/7, and can explain anything at whatever level you need.
Knowledge is essentially free now. The tools to build things are extremely cheap now. Whatever you’ve been putting off because it felt too hard or too expensive or too far outside your expertise: try it. Pursue the things you’re passionate about. You never know where they’ll lead. And in a world where the old career paths are getting disrupted, the person who spent a year building something they love might end up better positioned than the person who spent that year clinging to a job description.
4. Build the habit of adapting. This is maybe the most important one. The specific tools don’t matter as much as the muscle of learning new ones quickly. AI is going to keep changing, and fast. The models that exist today will be obsolete in a year. The workflows people build now will need to be rebuilt. The people who come out of this well won’t be the ones who mastered one tool. They’ll be the ones who got comfortable with the pace of change itself. Make a habit of experimenting. Try new things even when the current thing is working. Get comfortable being a beginner repeatedly. That adaptability is the closest thing to a durable advantage that exists right now.”
More importantly, this affects what you teach your kid if you are a parent. If you thought your parent’s career advice was bad, well, the advice you are giving now probably is too. My folks were way off. (they meant well though). Matt has a good take here too.
“Rethink what you’re telling your kids. The standard playbook: get good grades, go to a good college, land a stable professional job. It points directly at the roles that are most exposed. I’m not saying education doesn’t matter. But the thing that will matter most for the next generation is learning how to work with these tools, and pursuing things they’re genuinely passionate about. Nobody knows exactly what the job market looks like in ten years. But the people most likely to thrive are the ones who are deeply curious, adaptable, and effective at using AI to do things they actually care about. Teach your kids to be builders and learners, not to optimize for a career path that might not exist by the time they graduate.”
Basically, invest in yourself, invest in your community and learn the tools. We are in the early innings of the Age of AI. So embrace it. You still have a chance to get ahead of it. It will mean the difference between barely surviving to thriving in the new world we are entering.