I used to be struck by her pessimism, which she told me was shared by friends from California to Georgia to Recent Hampshire. In an already fragile world, one increasingly beset by climate change and the breakdown of the international order, AI looms within the background, threatening young people’s ability to secure a prosperous future.
It’s an comprehensible concern. Just just a few days before our drive, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was telling the US Federal Reserve’s board of governors that AI agents will leave entire job categories “identical to totally, totally gone.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told he believes AI will wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the following five years. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the corporate will eliminate jobs in favor of AI agents in the approaching years. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke told staff that they had to prove that latest roles couldn’t be done by AI before making a hire. And the view will not be limited to tech. Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, recently said he expects AI to exchange half of all white-collar jobs within the US.
These aren’t any longer mere theoretical projections. There’s already evidence that AI is affecting employment. Hiring of recent grads is down, for instance, in sectors like tech and finance. While that will not be entirely resulting from AI, the technology is sort of actually playing a task.
For Gen Z, the difficulty is broader than employment. It also touches on one other massive generational challenge: climate change. AI is computationally intensive and requires massive data centers. Huge complexes have already been built all across the country, from Virginia within the east to Nevada within the west. That buildout is just going to speed up as firms race to be first to create superintelligence. Meta and OpenAI have announced plans for data centers that may require five gigawatts of power just for his or her computing—enough to power your complete state of Maine within the summertime.
It’s very likely that utilities will turn to natural gas to power these facilities; some have already got. Which means more carbon dioxide emissions for an already warming world. Data centers also require vast amounts of water. There are communities straight away which can be literally running out of water since it’s being taken by nearby data centers, at the same time as climate change makes that resource more scarce.
Proponents argue that AI will make the grid more efficient, that it would help us achieve technological breakthroughs resulting in cleaner energy sources and, I don’t know, more butterflies and bumblebees? But xAI is belching CO2 into the Memphis skies from its methane-fueled generators. Google’s electricity demand and emissions are skyrocketing .
Things can be different, my daughter told me, if it were obviously useful. But for much of her generation, she argued, it’s a looming threat with ample costs and no obvious utility: “It’s not good for research since it’s not highly accurate. You possibly can’t use it for writing since it’s banned—and folks get zeros on papers who haven’t even used it due to AI detectors. it looks like it’s going to take all the great jobs. One teacher told us we’re all going to be janitors.”
It could be naïve to think we’re going back to a world without AI. We’re not. And yet there are other urgent problems that we’d like to deal with to construct security and prosperity for coming generations. This September/October issue is about our attempts to make the world safer. From missiles. From asteroids. From the unknown. From threats each existential and trivial.
We’re also introducing three latest columns on this issue, from a few of our leading writers: The Algorithm, which covers AI; The Checkup, on biotech; and The Spark, on energy and climate. You’ll see these in future issues, and you may also subscribe online to get them in your inbox every week.
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