Students must take it on themselves to make their education more flexible, integrating practical skills with the critical-thinking abilities that will be more highly valued in the age of robots.
The job market has never offered any guarantees. Mechanization wiped out once-secure careers in manufacturing. Now artificial intelligence (AI) is coming for a future generation of jobs that had seemed safe, starting with software coding and back-office work. So what can we do about it?
Despite some hyperbolic fears, there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of technology. It has the potential to bring a better quality of life and more widespread prosperity — eventually. To prosper in this future, workers will need new skills and a different education. And that means rethinking how we approach college and what we want it to provide us.
