"Will AI take my job?" It's the question I hear everywhere right now. My answer starts with something I tell clients all the time, and lately I've been telling myself too: change is the only constant.
My day job is at a university career center. Right now, the university is digging hard into what AI means for the workplace, and for students graduating into a job market that's more volatile than any I've seen. Outside of that, I coach professionals through their own career shifts.
On both sides, I'm hearing the same thing. I recently sent an anonymous survey to my coaching clients, and comment after comment came back about AI. Is AI going to take my job? How worried should I be? What happens if it shrinks my company? What would I even pivot into? How do I keep up when everything moves this fast? AI. AI. AI. AI. AI.
I get it. I spent 19 years in HR and talent acquisition, and I've sat in the rooms where restructuring decisions get made. So I won't tell you nothing is changing. Something is. But how you respond to it is still yours.
Will AI Take Jobs? Yes, and It Will Create New Ones
Let's be honest first. Some roles will shrink or disappear. Some already have. Pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.
But here's what tends to get lost in the panic. MIT economist David Autor and his colleagues traced U.S. job titles back to 1940. They found that about 60% of people working today are in jobs that didn't exist in 1940. No one in 1940 was planning a career as a software developer, a UX designer, or a social media manager. Those jobs had to be invented first.
Autor's research is also honest about the hard part: since 1980, technology has wiped out more jobs than it created, and the middle has been hit hardest. So this isn't a "don't worry, it all works out" story. It's a "the shape of work keeps changing, and new work keeps showing up" story.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates 170 million new jobs and 92 million displaced jobs worldwide by 2030. That's a lot of churn. It's also a net gain.
The jobs your kids will have probably don't have names yet. Neither, maybe, does your next one.
Fear is a terrible career coach
Here's what I see over and over. When people make career decisions from fear, they make one of two moves.
They freeze. They stay put, stop learning, and hope the wave passes them by.
Or they bolt. They grab the first "AI-proof" job they read about, sign up for a certificate they don't care about, or pivot into something that has nothing to do with who they are.
Neither one comes from what you actually want. Both come from trying to make an uncomfortable feeling go away. And a decision built to make a feeling go away rarely holds up once the feeling passes.
Fear narrows your thinking. It's built for running from a bear, not for designing the next ten years of your life. Life has always been changing. Industries rise and fall. Companies merge. Bosses leave. AI is a big shift, but it isn't the first one, and you've already lived through more change than you probably give yourself credit for.
How to Plan Your Career When AI Is Changing Everything
You don't need to have the whole future figured out. You need a steadier place to make the next decision from. Here's where I start with clients.
Name the fear out loud. "I'm afraid my role gets cut." "I'm afraid I'm too old to learn this." Fear loses some of its grip once it's specific.
Separate what you know from what you're imagining. Has your company announced cuts, or are you reading headlines at 11 p.m.? Both are real feelings. Only one is information.
Get curious about AI instead of avoiding it. Spend 20 minutes a week using the tools on your actual work. People who understand the tools are usually the ones asked to help shape what comes next.
Look at what you do, not just your title. Your title might change. Your judgment, relationships, and ability to solve messy people problems travel with you.
Ask the pivot question, but from curiosity. "If my job changed tomorrow, what would I want to move toward?" is a great question. It just lands differently when you ask it because you're interested, not because you're scared.
That last one is the whole point. The question isn't wrong. The place you ask it from changes the answer.
The bottom line
AI will change work. So did the internet, the PC, and the assembly line. Every one of those shifts closed some doors and opened others nobody could see coming.
You don't have to predict the future to be ready for it. You just have to stop making decisions from panic. Fear will always hand you an answer. It's just almost never the right one.
If you're sitting with the "what would I even pivot into?" question, you don't have to figure it out alone or in a panic. Book a free consult, and let's map out your next move from a calmer place.
Have a college student wondering what to major in? No major is truly AI-proof, but some build skills that travel no matter what changes. I break those down on TikTok.
Sources
Does technology help or hurt employment?, MIT News, April 2024
Future of Jobs Report 2025 press release, World Economic Forum, January 2025