A former Meta AI executive has launched a nonprofit organization to help Gen Z prepare for jobs at risk due to artificial intelligence. It highlights the growing concerns over automation and the need for new skills in the evolving workforce. The nonprofit foundation help job seekers find roles based on their strengths and interests.
Former Meta and Salesforce executive Clara Shih said AI has created the worst entry-level job market in 37 years. New graduates are entering a workforce where every job is an AI job. Shih has been in the industry for almost 20 years, but the turning point for her came last year, after seeing Meta's AI agents surpass some of her top employees across multiple tasks, as per a report by Fortune on 26 April.
"In that moment I knew that nothing would ever be the same," she told Fortune. "You feel radicalised in that moment when you see it working."
She also noticed that the children of friends and family, including Ivy League graduates, were finding it “practically impossible” to land jobs.
"If you want to find a job and if you want to keep your job, you need to learn how to get really good at using AI agents," she told Fortune.
Shih has launched a non-profit, the New Work Foundation, to help Gen Z for a future dominated by AI agents.
To help Gen Z prepare for the AI-driven workforce, the New Work Foundation has launched several AI-enabled tools under a consumer-facing brand called Dear CC. One of the tools launched is called Field Report. It offers job seekers a look at the current state of their preferred career path. For example, a user looking into a career in law will see that while there are 31,500 open roles in the US with low competition, the risk of AI automation in that specific field is very high.
Another tool launched by the foundation is called JobClaw. The AI agent is designed to help job seekers find roles based solely on their strengths and interests. The tool requires no résumé, and users can simply fill out a five-question intake form detailing who they are and what they actually want from a career.
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Many Gen Zers have soured on the technology as adoption grows. A recent Gallup poll found that Gen Z’s sentiment toward AI has grown significantly negative compared to a year ago. Shih said those rejecting the technology are actually among the people most critical to its evolution.
The survey found that Gen Z's excitement and hope around AI have plummeted, while anger around the technology has risen. The poll found that while excitement about the technology dropped from 36% to 22% over the last year, anger rose from 22% to 31%, while anxiety remained at 42%.
Some business leaders, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, believe the technology will disrupt half of the white-collar workforce. But others, like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, foresee the technology working alongside human workers. Whether or not Gen Z adopts AI, Shih said the future of work is moving ahead without them.