A Meta AI exec watched agents beat her top workers. Now she’s built a nonprofit to help Gen Z find jobs before they disappear
Now every job is an artificial intelligence job. At least that’s how Clara Shih sees it. Former AI manager Meta And sales forceHe saw the future of the job market, and that is a workforce fully enabled by AI.
Shih has been working in the field of artificial intelligence for 20 years. But the turning point came last fall, when Meta saw its AI agents match and even outperform some of its top employees on multiple tasks.
“At that moment I realized that nothing would ever be the same,” he said. Luck. “As soon as you see it working, you feel radicalized.”
Around the same time, Shih was hearing from the children of friends and family members, some of whom were Ivy League graduates, about the impossibility of finding a job. That’s why he founded the New Work Foundation, a nonprofit organization that includes consumer-facing brands. Dear C.C.It aims to train Generation Z for a future workplace dominated by artificial intelligence agents.
“I realized that the only way to help people keep up with the pace of AI was to give them AI tools,” said Shih, who is no longer head of AI business at Meta but now serves as a consultant there. “Because if you use traditional methods, it won’t be fast enough to keep up with the pace at which AI is advancing.”
Artificial intelligence has advanced at a dizzying pace, rapidly evolving from a fun tool used to draft emails and create cat memes into a complex tool that now threatens to displace large swaths of white-collar workers.
As a result of this rapid development, Generation Z finds themselves today in a vineyard. The threat of AI-driven layoffs, combined with a slowdown in entry-level job openings, has many people rethinking their career choices. According to a recent news ZipRecruiter reportMany are exploring alternatives to the corporate ladder, including entrepreneurship, gig work and trade school. Still, Shih believes there is a path forward for new graduates.
“If you want to get a job and you want to keep your job, you have to learn how to really master using AI agents,” he said.
This sentiment reflects what is currently happening in the office. A recent survey from AI enterprise platform Writer found that employees Actively using AI Compared to employees who refuse to embrace technology, they are more likely to receive promotions or raises in their daily tasks.
The New Work Foundation recently launched several AI-powered tools to help Gen Z develop and prepare for the workforce in the AI era. One of these is the Field Report, which gives job seekers a look at the status of their preferred career path.
For example, when looking at a career in law, there are 31,500 open positions in the USA, but although the competition is low, the risk of artificial intelligence automation is very high.
