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- Mo Gawdat advises job seekers to focus on human skills to thrive in the AI-era job market.
- Gawdat suggests "human-centric jobs" like nursing or counseling.
- Tech leaders have highlighted communication and judgment as vital skills AI struggles to replicate.
An ex-Google executive has tips for surviving the AI era.
Mo Gawdat, the former chief business officer for Google, predicts that 30% of certain job sectors will be gone by 2028, but people can still "double down on human skills" to overcome the turbulence.
"We have an entire generation that is out of college today that will struggle, unfortunately," Gawdat said on an episode of Steven Bartlett's podcast "The Diary Of A CEO" that aired on Sunday. "And my advice to them is learn the tool and focus on human-centric jobs."
"A lot of people can make a living by being a nurse or by being a counselor or by being, you know, anything that connects to humans," Gawdat added.
His comments come as tech leaders increasingly point to communication, relationship-building, and having good judgement as skills that remain difficult to automate.
OpenAI president Greg Brockman recently said that "taste" is "a new core skill." He said that while AI can create things quickly, it takes judgment to decide what to keep.
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said in a May podcast interview that AI still can't match the work of the company's artists and designers, and that he won't let AI erode the quality of his app.
And Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in an earnings call in May that while the company's engineering head count has remained "mostly flat" at around 15,000 employees over the past two years, it is still adding workers in the sales department.
"Because, I think we all realize the one thing that we are doing here with you, selling and communicating, the agents are not exactly doing that," Benioff said during the earnings call.
Gawdat also said on "The Diary Of A CEO" that even though AI may bring about uncertainty, AI is not the enemy and can be harnessed to create opportunities.
"By definition, the better you are at using an AI to do your job, the more likely you are to be successful," said Gawdat. "Learn how to interact with AI. Welcome AI into your hybrid world of work."
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