How Can Ordinary College Students Find Jobs in the AI Era?

The Challenge of Answering the Question

This question is a tough nut to crack. The difficulty doesn't lie in the answer itself, but in the aspect of abilities.

Let's first talk about what could be called the answer. Well, it's not really a definite answer, just a reference and a topic for discussion.

Three Types of Jobs in the Future

Future jobs can be roughly divided into three types: The first type is jobs that AI can handle completely on its own; the second type is jobs where AI takes the lead and humans offer support; and the third type is jobs where humans are in charge and AI provides assistance.

Jobs AI Can Do Alone

For jobs that AI can fully and independently handle, there are almost no employment opportunities left. It's like the job of a postman, which is almost extinct these days. However, you can get involved in the R & D of AI applications behind the scenes. There's a demand for this, as applications need maintenance.

Jobs with AI Leading and Humans Assisting

Take the content production process as an example. In the past, people wrote and revised manuscripts. Now, AI does the writing, and humans review and make changes. This requires you to be highly professional in a certain field to land such jobs and use AI to achieve your own development.

Jobs with Humans Leading and AI Assisting

Jobs in this category usually focus on providing emotional value, especially in scenarios where real people are needed to solve problems or offer services, rather than relying on computers or programs. For instance, the combination of hair - cutting and AI. How can they be combined? AI can design hairstyles, allowing customers to see the effects before getting a haircut and make adjustments accordingly. But the actual hair - cutting still has to be done by humans. AI is responsible for hairstyle design, showing the effects, and even giving relevant suggestions. If a barbershop introduces an AI designer, it would probably be very popular. It has advantages not only in attracting traffic and attention but also in service delivery.

Different Requirements for Different Jobs

These three types of jobs have different requirements for people. For jobs that AI can do alone, you need to have the ability to develop AI applications or even models. For jobs where AI leads and humans assist, you're required to have relatively rich experience in a certain field and use AI to make a career transition. For jobs where humans lead and AI assists, the key lies in the industry characteristics. These jobs must be done by people, can't be replaced by programs, and even robots can't truly take their place. And you need to use AI to gain new advantages.

Employment Advice for Ordinary College Students

Now, let's talk about how ordinary college students can find jobs. Since we're talking about ordinary college students, the first type of job is only partly feasible. The threshold for AI model R & D is just too high.

There are two situations in AI application development. One is developing AI tools, which requires some experience, is quite difficult, and also has high requirements for the company. The other is using AI to develop other tools, which is more suitable for starting a business, like the current overseas business. If college students want to develop in this direction, they should learn AI programming well, such as using Cursor.

The second type, jobs where AI leads and humans assist, seems unfeasible at first glance because fresh graduates don't seem to have much experience and can't compare with those who have been in the workplace for years. But it's not completely impossible, as there's a window period. One is the window period of AI development, as it hasn't reached its peak yet. The other is the window period for humans to use AI, as many people haven't realized it or used AI deeply. At this time, college students can use AI to overtake others on the curve. Moreover, AI helps newbies more. Originally, you might know nothing, but with AI, you can do a lot of things. Whether it's programming, writing, or learning other things, AI greatly reduces the gap between people in terms of experience, knowledge, and even practical operations. Even someone who knows nothing about programming can create something good with the help of AI. So the key to this path is to choose a direction and then use AI to speed up learning and application, so that you can master what others used to take two or three years to learn or do in the shortest possible time.

The third type, jobs where humans lead and AI assists, tests your ability to choose an industry. What kind of industries can't be achieved through programs and are hard to be replaced by machines? Such industries definitely don't belong to the online or electronic category, nor are they process - based and repetitive mechanical jobs. For example, jobs like being a maternity nurse or a nanny require human participation and are not simple repetitive labor. However, this also means that it's not easy to scale up in this field.

Conclusion

These are the three types of jobs in the AI era, the abilities needed for these jobs, and how college students can get into them. Going back to the beginning, the difficulty isn't whether there's an answer. In fact, this isn't even a definite answer, just something for everyone to discuss and refer to. The real difficulty is whether you can find a direction and take action. That's the harder part.

Daily Reading & Writing by Xiaolu 2025.03.20 [day563]