AI - Caution and Confusion

 

Already, some companies are hiring fewer interns and recent graduates because AI is capable of doing their tasks. Others are conducting mass layoffs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to rise to 20% in the next few years.

Students are terrified that this shift will dramatically accelerate when true AGI arrives, though when that might happen is up for debate. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks AGI will be developed before 2029, while Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis predicts that it’ll come in the next five to 10 years. Jurković believes it might arrive even sooner: He co-authored a timeline forecast for the AI Futures Project, which aligns with the prediction that most white-collar jobs could be automated by 2030.

Others disagree: “It is extremely unlikely that AGI will come in the next five years,” Marcus said. “It’s just marketing hype to pretend otherwise when so many core problems (like hallucinations and reasoning errors) remain unsolved.” Marcus has noted that throwing more and more data and computing power at AI models has so far failed to produce models sophisticated enough to do many of the same kinds of tasks as humans.

While questions remain about when AGI will occur and how valuable a college degree will be in a world upended by human-level artificial intelligence, students are itching to pursue their careers now, before, they worry, it’s too late.

That’s led many to drop out to start their own companies. Since 2023, students have been leaving college to chase the AI gold rush, drawn to the success stories of generations past like Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Anysphere CEO Michael Truell, now 24, and Mercor CEO Brendan Foody, 22, dropped out of MIT and Georgetown University respectively to pursue their startups. Anysphere was last valued at $9.9 billion, while Mercor has raised over $100 million. With AGI threatening to completely replace human labor, some students see a ticking clock—and a huge opportunity.

“I felt that there’s a limited window to act in order to have a hand on the steering wheel,” said Jared Mantell, who was studying economics and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis before dropping out to focus full-time on his startup dashCrystal, which aims to automate design of electronics. The company has raised over $800,000 so far at a valuation of around $20 million.

Dropping out means losing out on the benefits of a college degree. According to the Pew Research Center, younger adults with a bachelor’s degree or more generally make at least $20,000 more than their peers without one. And in a world where entry-level jobs are being decimated by AI, lacking a degree could limit job prospects for young people even more.

Even the cofounder of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator known for funding young founders who have dropped out, thinks students should stay in school. “Don’t drop out of college to start or work for a startup,” Paul Graham posted on X in July. “There will be other (and probably better) startup opportunities, but you can’t get your college years back.”

Blair doesn’t think that dropping out of school is for everyone. “It’s very difficult and taxing to drop out of college early and get a job,” she said. “This is something that I would only recommend to extremely resilient individuals who felt they have been adequately prepared to get a job by college already.”

- Author: Victoria Feng, Forbes