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How AI Could Radically Change White-Collar Jobs - With Clara Shih

Nicholas Thompson

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For years, tech CEOs have promised that AI will take on the menial, repetitive tasks that have long been a part of office life. Typically, those tasks are assigned to younger, less experienced workers—and poll after poll shows Gen Z is increasingly concerned about what AI will mean for their job prospects. Clara Shih says those fears are, at least partly, justified. As the former head of Meta's Business AI group, and the CEO of Salesforce AI before that, Shih knows firsthand how companies are deploying AI and where it's affecting hiring. Now, as the founder of the New Work Foundation, Shih is building tools to help young workers navigate this complex hiring maze.

In conversation with Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, Shih details the skills students should focus on to prepare for the AI era, how employees can leverage the technology, and why more people—of all ages—might soon find themselves working for an algorithm.

Produced independently of The Atlantic’s editorial staff.

02:35 What New Work Foundation is doing for Gen Z job seekers
04:00 Is your major cooked? Testing the "Field Report" tool
06:50 What AI exposure scores don’t capture
10:20 How colleges should prepare students for the AI era
17:30 Why beginners shouldn't use AI to learn something new
22:00 Is college still worth it?
23:40 Why applying for a job is harder than it used to be
29:50 AI will make big companies more efficient—and less fun
33:10 How the bitter lesson could apply to entire organizations
36:12 The three buckets all white-collar work might soon fall into
42:51 Are companies actually laying people off because of AI?
47:50 What Clara would do if she had an unlimited budget to invest in AI

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Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic, author of the best-selling book “The Running Ground,” and host of the The Most Interesting Thing in Tech video series and Most Interesting Thing in AI podcast. He was previously the editor-in-chief of WIRED and the editor of NewYorker.com. A competitive runner, Nicholas is an American age-group record holder in the 50k run.

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20 Comments

@radhikapillai378 12 hours ago

I loved how detail oriented and practical the questions were in this interview - helpful context for parents, students, and professionals.

@Larimerst 1 month ago

My daughter, and her friends literally hate AI. And that's how they express it.. When asked what they think of AI they say "hate". So do my college age nieces, and their recently graduated friends. We're building a future that young people hate.

@astrofog4638 1 month ago (edited)

She’s mostly describing Phase 1: entry-level hiring shrinks first because AI can absorb a lot of junior white-collar work. I agree with that, but the harder question is Phase 2: what happens when AI moves up the org chart and companies permanently need far fewer analysts, developers, managers, finance staff, etc.?

If white-collar employment falls 20% and there’s no equivalent new labor demand, the damage doesn’t stop with those workers. Their spending supports restaurants, retail, housing, services, contractors and many other jobs. Governments then get hit twice: lower income/property/sales-tax revenue while unemployment, healthcare and social-support costs rise.

That second-order fiscal problem is where this gets much darker.

Right now companies are still cautiously figuring out what can be automated and which jobs can safely be eliminated. In a few years, many will have road-tested playbooks: start small, measure the results, identify which work can be automated, then scale the model across the organization.

As AI improves, that same process moves up the food chain. Mid-tier careers become the next target. Under that scenario, a 20% reduction in white-collar employment no longer looks impossible.

Most discussion is still stuck either on Phase 1 or on the assumption that new jobs will automatically absorb displaced workers. Clara Shih gets through Phase 1 and briefly steps into Phase 2, but stops short of confronting the possibility of massive labor restructuring and its downstream economic and fiscal effects. That is the part of this discussion we really need to be having.

@kalloh5519 1 month ago

this topic needs to be covered more often. We have a huge societal problem in front of us

@clrwhl 1 month ago

The counter to her perspective are reporters who’ve talked to ppl who work at AI-pilled places and they describe a totally different experience at work. Also her own reaction to “being the bottleneck” when working with AI agents sounds so stupid and terrifying! She’s a slick talker because she has a company/services to sell. I would take everything she’s saying with a huge pinch of salt. I also listen to a ton of business ppl commenting on ai and there was nothing new here.

@irradiance 1 month ago

Thanks for your insights, Clara. Very relatable and interesting.

@stephenboisvert6703 1 month ago

I reject the notion that every person is responsible for their career when the industry is trying to profit which means not hiring them unless they're desperate. There used to be pressure to hire college grads to use their youthful motivation(/naivety) to write bulk code while learning on the job but that has evaporated.

Society has a responsibility to find talented people who want to help and enable them without trying to earn profit for themselves in the process or we will fall further behind to China.

@detelfsoest2778 1 month ago

Time to start taxing the revenue generated by AI/machines and introducing a basic income.

@ShealanJenkins 1 month ago (edited)

The issue with the many smaller businesses opening and the rise of solo-preneuers...is that the market will become overwhelmingly saturated. I dont think this is viable for the vast majority of people. This is going to be ugly for so many of us..

@Stella-se1lg 1 month ago

Great Podcasts❤

@ryana42 1 month ago

The unreliability of AI, and the skill depreciation that AI could drive makes me want to say WHY would you allow someone to recommend not having a deep profound understanding of Python or any of the hard sciences? How could we know whether something is correct, safe, or worth pursuing if we lack the clarity? Moreover, why should we tell people don't become a specialist expert but a generalist? If the machine breaks, and machines made by flawed humans can and will break, what happens when we need to check the numbers but don't know how.

@Daniel-rp7nb 1 month ago

3:48 their degrees? How many people work in the areas of their degrees?

@Heminien 1 month ago

you should invite a gen z guy to set up the level of your soundtrack

@Lemorande 1 month ago

I thought we were eschewing the pursuit of passion in the modern world, being pointless in the pursuit of an income producing career. Pursue something you’re capable at, and is a skill set needed in the marketplace.

@bethboyle1479 4 weeks ago

Government and economists need to get to work on this maybe by retiring people earlier, hiring young graduates now and getting money into education for a social-democracy

@MoffatMtonga-f6j 1 month ago

We don't need to prepare we need to kill it and put it to rest by not acknowledging it but rather keep human relationship and keep the human brain functioning

@RB-yj9ng 1 month ago (edited)

Elon has already stated AI will do away the need for money. Capitalism essentially collapses. Even more, how many jobs will it take before the entire house of cards falls? She is not an economist but some have said it will only take 35% unemployment before it collapses; Great Depression was around 25%. Most experts believe that number will be more than doubled with continuous AI/robotic improvements. She also feels we still have time but that window is closing fast.

@vme90-y7l 3 weeks ago

The end of this discussion sounds like we are still deeply stuck in the scarcity mentality. As in there just is not enough of something/anything to go around - and now even AI. So we need to condem people to the usual cheating and conniving and plotting to be the one who gets ahead. We can't even imagine what abundance will mean. BTW you did not even consider the robot revolution coming.

@waynr 1 month ago

Interviewing rich people with investments in the AI industry and letting them promote their fatalistic narratives about how everyone needs to learn AI is bad journalism, borderline unethical.

@caspian915 1 month ago

1:31 you all in the media need to stop believing young people when they’re responding to polls or two questions from journalists. Social pressure to answer a certain way and self-report answers are the least reliable and valid data you can get. They may claim to have these fears and beliefs, but their behavior lies their claims. And treating young people as if they are incredibly thoughtful and nuanced thinkers about topics is generally giving them way too much credit. There are real social and existential issues with the continued existence and development of AI, but running every damn story through the filter of young people don’t like it based on polling.