AI and the Future of Work: What Young People Must Understand Now

AI and the Future of Work: What Young People Must Understand Now

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva delivered a stark warning: artificial intelligence will hit the labor market like a "tsunami," with young people bearing the brunt of the impact. The numbers are sobering: 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be affected by AI, either enhanced, transformed or eliminated entirely.

The Entry-Level Problem

Georgieva pointed to a troubling pattern: the tasks being eliminated are precisely those that entry-level jobs typically involve. Young people searching for their first positions find fewer opportunities, while workers in the middle face wage stagnation without the productivity boost that AI provides to enhanced roles.

The traditional career ladder, where graduates start with routine tasks and gradually take on more responsibility, is being dismantled. AI excels at exactly the kind of structured, repetitive work that junior employees once used as a stepping stone. Data entry, basic analysis, scheduling, preliminary research: these are no longer guaranteed pathways into an industry.

What AI Cannot Take

Here is the uncomfortable truth that gets lost in the doom headlines: AI is exceptionally good at pattern recognition, optimization and executing defined tasks at scale. It is remarkably poor at genuine creativity, original thinking and navigating truly novel situations.

Large language models do not invent. They recombine. They generate plausible outputs based on statistical patterns in training data. When you ask an AI to write a story, it produces something that resembles millions of stories it has seen. It cannot imagine what has never existed.

• Imagination

  The ability to conceive of things that do not yet exist. To ask "what if" in ways that have never been asked before. Every breakthrough technology, every paradigm shift, every work of art that moved humanity forward came from human imagination.

• Inventiveness

  The capacity to solve problems in unexpected ways. To connect domains that seem unrelated. AI can optimize within constraints; humans can question whether the constraints themselves make sense.

• Judgment Under Uncertainty

  Real decisions involve incomplete information, competing values and stakes that cannot be quantified. Humans navigate ambiguity. AI requires clearly defined objectives and measurable outcomes.

• Meaning and Purpose

  AI does not care why it does what it does. It has no sense of purpose, no drive to create something that matters. The question "why should this exist?" is fundamentally human.

Education Must Change First

If the labor market is being reshaped at unprecedented speed, then the institutions preparing young people for that market need to transform just as quickly. This is where schools, universities and training programs face their most urgent challenge.

Consider what this means in practice:

• AI as a Learning Accelerator

  Students can use AI to explore complex topics, generate explanations at their level of understanding, and test their knowledge through interactive dialogue. A student struggling with calculus can have a personalized tutor available at any hour. The teacher's role shifts from information delivery to mentorship and critical thinking development.

• AI as a Creative Partner

  Writers can use AI to brainstorm, to explore variations on ideas, to handle the mechanical aspects of drafting while focusing on the vision and voice that make work meaningful. Designers can generate dozens of starting points and then apply human judgment to refine and direct. Musicians can experiment with arrangements and then bring the emotional intention that transforms notes into art.

• AI as an Innovation Tool

  Students should learn to prompt effectively, to evaluate AI outputs critically, to recognize when AI is hallucinating or missing the point. These are new literacies as fundamental as reading and writing. The goal is not to depend on AI but to direct it.

The Industrial Revolution Parallel

We have been here before, in a sense. The Industrial Revolution displaced millions of agricultural workers, destroyed entire categories of skilled craft labor, and created social upheaval that took generations to resolve. It also built the foundation for unprecedented prosperity, longer lives and opportunities that would have been unimaginable to previous generations.

The difference now is speed. The transition from agricultural to industrial society played out over a century. The AI transformation is happening in years, not decades. Workers who trained for careers that existed when they entered school may find those careers obsolete before they graduate.

Human Adaptability: Our Greatest Asset

If there is reason for optimism, it lies in the one trait that has carried our species through every existential challenge: adaptability. Humans survived ice ages, plagues, world wars and technological revolutions that would have seemed impossible to navigate. We are not defined by the tools we use but by our capacity to learn new tools, to reimagine our relationship with work, to find meaning in changing circumstances.

The generation entering the workforce now will need to reinvent themselves multiple times throughout their careers. This is not a failure of planning; it is the new reality. The students who will thrive are those who learn to see AI not as a threat to their livelihood but as an extension of their capabilities.

A Call to Action for Young People

Conclusion

The IMF's warning is serious and should not be dismissed. The disruption is real, the timeline is compressed, and the stakes are high. But fatalism is not the answer. Every technological revolution has created new categories of work that were previously unimaginable. The jobs that will matter in 2035 may not have names yet.

What separates those who struggle from those who thrive will not be technical skill alone. It will be the capacity to imagine, to invent, to adapt, and to bring human judgment to problems that machines cannot fully understand. These are the capabilities that no algorithm can replicate. They are what make us human.

The future is not written. It will be built by those who refuse to be passive observers of their own displacement. This generation has the opportunity to redefine what work means, what education prepares us for, and how humans and machines can create value together. That is not a burden. It is a challenge worthy of a species that has survived every challenge before it.

Source

• 1. The Guardian

  Original article: "Young will suffer most when AI 'tsunami' hits jobs, says head of IMF"

• 2. International Monetary Fund

  IMF research on AI and labor market transformation.

• 3. World Economic Forum

  Davos 2026 discussions on AI and employment.

• 4. OECD Employment

  Research on skills and the future of work.