AI Will Create Your Teen's Career (HM#3)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Your 18, 19, 20 year old is going to be having office pizza parties with robots in the Metaverse within the next five years. It doesn't matter if they work in the trades or cybersecurity or tech or sales or healthcare or customer service. They are going to work with AI agents and everybody's going to want a place to meet them. Remember, everybody and their mother dragged Mark Zuckerberg for the metaverse. Zuck wasted $60 billion on avatars with no legs. And look, the Metaverse is a meme. I mean, look at it, I get it. But in the next three years, when your kids sit down for their first real job interview, there's going to be a question if in that interview that you've never heard before, it's gonna sound something like, how well do you work with AI? And most 18 to 20 year olds have no idea how to answer that question because most parents have no idea the question is even coming.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:42]:
And the schools are close to zero help, high schools and colleges included, other than telling kids they can't be artists, they can't be creatives, they can't be software developers and go protest for UBI or something. So today I want to talk about what's actually happening in businesses right now. What are AI agents and why I think Mark Zuckerberg was right. And then most importantly, what your kids can start this week to find a real career direction for the world they actually live in, not some imaginary utopia or imaginary dystopia. So why am I talking about this? I worked in AI and machine learning software for years before founding degree Free. My book, the Degree Free Way how To Help youp 16 To 20 Year Old Build the Life They Want has helped thousands of families, 17,000 families nationwide help their child find career directions in this current market. Our team has helped hundreds of young adults start real careers through our launch program. And what we're watching happen in the labor market right now is big, bigger than a lot of parents realize.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:34]:
And honestly, once you see what's coming, it starts to feel a little insane to send your kid to college, because there's just no way that a four year degree that actually takes six years is actually going to be able to keep up with the speed of what's going on. Let's define some terms, because Most parents hear AI and they think of ChatGPT and a chatbot, like what's the best chocolate chip cookie recipe? That is not what's coming. When tech people talk about AI agents, they're not talking about chatbots, they're Talking about little pieces of software, think of them as employees that just never sleep, that are built to do one specific job. In a lot of ways, it's not that different from how our system functions now because of the Internet, before 9 to 5, that's when things ran. But because of the Internet now there are different jobs. And when I say jobs, I mean small specific tasks that can get done when humans are not doing them. This is just an expedited version of that. And for lack of a more elegant explanation, that's basically what this is.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:28]:
So an agent can answer customer emails. An agent can summarize like a week's worth of sales data and make charts. An agent can schedule interviews with different candidates. If you're talking about recruiting, an agent can write the first draft of all social media posts and then schedule them too. And an agent is even able to call vendors to confirm orders. All this is going to do is automate more things that just humans don't need to be doing. And it's going to lead people to a lot more human work. But all of these agents does a very narrow job and they're being built right now by the thousands at every company you've heard of and plenty you haven't.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:02]:
The CTO of HubSpot bought the domain name agent.com because he thinks the market for the buying and selling and renting of these agents is going to be huge. And he's not alone in that. Literally every major software company is racing to build these things and sell them and then rent them out. Think about it a little bit more like this, because remember when people started talking about self driving cars? A lot of that was the whole idea that cars a lot of times are not in use. You only drive your car when you're driving it, of course. So when you're not, if you were able to just turn it on and it was able to go and pick up other people and make you money, of course you would do that, I mean, if you wanted to. Now that vision is true for agents, right? You have a software worker that folds like digital laundry, essentially. Let's just break this down really small.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:41]:
So think of like a local locksmith and he's got two employees and he has to run payroll because his business is kind of small. But now he can just hire an AI agent and it'll save him like 10 hours of work a month, which is huge. If you run your own business and it's a smaller business and he can just pay a little bit of money and it'll Save him way more time. And he'll be able to make more money as a result of having this little agent that just goes through and does his little Excel spreadsheet and then sends it off and then sends an order for payroll. And he would just rent this agent. So this agent would belong to somebody else, or maybe it would belong to him and he would rent it out. But for this example, he's renting it. So when it's not folding his digital laundry, it's folding someone else's.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:17]:
So, for instance, a software developer could build this, and then when it's not working for the locksmith, he can rent it out to his neighbor, to the guy down the street who runs an H VAC business, or to the lady down the street that runs a bakery, or the doctor who runs her own mobile IV business. So the thing is here, these aren't physical robots. Like, they're just little pieces of software, like I said, that do specific things. And businesses are just going to rent them, stack them up, and then license their time and then share them across a lot of different businesses. And that's why it's about to be everywhere. This is also why I'm super optimistic about the future. Because a lot of the work that people do now, you know, people talk about fake Internet jobs. We're not built to work on computers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:51]:
Like, humans are not best suited to working on computers in rows and columns. It's not what we're good at. We do incredible things. But sitting and looking at spreadsheets, people just have a certain amount of bandwidth. And your brain is just not designed to do that. It's designed to do better things than that, fortunately, like even quants at Goldman Sachs, like some of the most granular rows and columns, people on the planet can only look at so many rows of data before their brain just hits a wall, because that's not what we're designed to do. And so even at those companies, they have to build tools that summarize it all down before they can actually see or do anything and make decisions. Now, decision making, something is uniquely human.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:27]:
So a huge chunk of what people do on computers today is stuff that we're just not good at. We're staring at spreadsheets, we're copying data between tabs. A lot of you would be shocked to realize that Excel, even with AI, is still running most of our economy. And again, from my time working in AI and machine learning, you would be shocked at these Fortune hundred companies that are just running most of their businesses off of these really Ugly, horrible. Huge Excel spreadsheets. Not kidding. We're just copying data between tabs. We're just reading the same long email chain multiple times and then updating same 3 or sometimes 10 different systems with literally the exact same information.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:02]:
It's a huge waste of human time, but it's not a huge waste of agent time. So that means that agents are going to replace people. They're going to free us up to do things that actually matter, especially things that are in the physical universe that only humans can do, that are creative or physical, and that we're a lot more adept at doing. Think about telegrams. You used to have to go and send a telegram message, and then it would be a physical message that would be physically typed out and then given to somebody. And sometimes think about like the pony express days. You have to give that telegram to somebody and they would have to ride a horse to give it to somebody. It's not an efficient use of humanity, right? Not efficient use of time, not an efficient use of energy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:37]:
And so then we started using the phone, because now you don't have to physically do those things. You can just call. But then later we had email and nobody at any point was going, you know what? Actually, I'd rather go back to the telegraph days. That makes more sense. Because that's not the best use of human beings. It's not our best use to be riding a horse from place to place in order to deliver messages on paper, send. Our time is freed up way more to do things that actually matter or are a better use of our time. And again, let's go back to the email example.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:03]:
But when email showed up, it didn't replace the salesperson. It changed how salespeople worked. So all of this doom and gloom about it getting rid of all the jobs, I just don't buy it. It's going to make a lot more jobs than currently exist. And I think they're going to be a lot better jobs. Agents are doing that same thing. They're not replacing employees. They're replacing a bunch of specific tasks that used to eat up the employee's day that are not the best use of their mind or of their energy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:26]:
I think the more you fight against technology instead of embrace and use it, I think the further away we get from work. That looks a lot more human, a lot more like our life looks. So employees who know how to use them get way more done, and employees who don't are just going to fall behind if you just replace. What I'm saying about AI With Internet, you know that to be true because we've already accepted it, right? Employees who know how to use the Internet get way more done. Employees who don't know how to use the Internet don't get as much done because people that use technology are able to get more done faster. And this goes back into human history. People that had tools like metal tools were able to get more work done more quickly. Let's use a really simple example, but hollowing out a canoe by fire takes way more time than it does if you have a sharp metal tool or even a sharp rock tool that you're able to use to carve out the inside of the canoe.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:09]:
A little bit more extreme, but same example, real quick. Pause. If you're a parent trying to cut through all of the AI panic and figure out what your young adult should be doing right now, please subscribe. This show exists to give you real information about what's happening in the world of work so you can help your child make a better decision for their future career. Okay, so here's the part that nobody is telling parents. The tech industry right now is building this stuff first. That's where it starts. It's kind of where it always starts.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:31]:
Like Eli Whitney at one point built a cotton gin and when he was building it, he was the inventor of technology. But what's really happening now, and this is what most people are missing, is that all of this technology is absolutely going to make its way down into every single business in this country, not just tech companies. I'm talking the sheet metal shop in rural South Carolina is going to be using AI agents. The custom window blinds company in Ohio is going to be using agents. The two person CPA office in Texas is going to be using AI agents. A regional logistics company outside of Phoenix is going to be using AI agents. The local dental group, the flooring contractor, the insurance agency downtown. Every one of these businesses is going to have a collection of agents doing narrow tasks, summarizing data, writing emails, running invoices, managing social media and responding to reviews or building schedules.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:17]:
All stuff that, to be perfectly honest with you, humans are not best at. We're best at doing way more creative, way more interesting things. And here's what that means. Every small business in America is now going to need people who can set up and manage and work alongside these agents. And it's going to create way more jobs and especially I think, for creatives. Every small business is going to need video editors or producers. Every small business is going to need somebody doing social media marketing And I don't mean the scheduling, I mean the actual thinking. And the cool part, every small business is going to need somebody who understands the basics of software so they can plug agents into each other.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:52]:
And actually, let's talk about that for a second. Your 19 year old should learn to code. Actually, what they should not be doing is going to college to learn how to code. They do not have time. The speed of technology is too quick to spend four to six years learning how to code and then getting into the industry completely blown past by teenagers who have just gone and used YouTube University for three months and built a small little GitHub portfolio and then actually learned how to use APIs. As simple as built small agents for small local businesses. There is literally no competition. As a small business owner, who am I going to hire? Am I going to hire a computer science graduate or am I going to hire a local kid who worked at a car wash, has some hustle and has built like three projects on GitHub? It's 100% the kid that works at the car wash every single time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:33]:
So kind of like I was talking about, I see this future where a custom blinds company in Ohio is going to have a software developer on staff. Like a little regional gas station chain is going to have a social media marketer who uses AI to produce 20 pieces of content a week. A sheet metal shop in South Carolina is going to have somebody whose whole job is just running the AI agents that handle customer quotes and scheduling. Because you still need people to do all of that and in fact you need a lot more people. So jobs that used to only exist at tech companies and ad agencies are going to exist at every small business that runs on a computer. In an AI world, white collar jobs are going to become blue collar jobs and blue collar jobs are going to become white collar jobs. And by the way, what I'm talking about is every business, all of them. And you know what? The other side of this is just as important.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:14]:
So when AI agents take the boring computer tasks off people's plate, those people get freed up to do actual work. Like real work, not fake laptop jobs, like work that makes businesses actual money. That's why the next few years is going to create so many jobs so fast that it's going to be hard to keep up. And while we are definitely in this weird middle ground where things are just kind of shifting, that's why the market feels so crazy. This is not a job apocalypse, it's job creation. It's just painful while these jobs start to Shift around and then get created just like the Internet. And it's starting to pick up speed. And I actually recently saw a chart for entry level software developer hires.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:48]:
And guess what? It's going back up. And one of the most interesting things that happened of late is that we got inbound inquiries from software developers who are looking to train 18, 19 and 20 year old young adults in how to be software developers because they need help. Because what's going to happen as a result, and what I'm telling you has already occurred in a lot of small businesses, is you get into cloud code, you get into ChatGPT, you get into Gemini, and you start using these coding tools and you quickly get over your skis. Because people that are coding right now are not software developers. And because they're not software developers, as soon as it gets the least bit complex or as soon as there's any issue, debugging and QA is really hard, unless you know what you're looking for. Because just because you can use a AI tool to create code does not mean that you can debug it. Whether you're able to read code enough to figure out where your problem is or how to change one little thing without rewriting everything and spending all your tokens, that's just kind of how it is. So actually it's very obvious that there's going to be way more software developers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:43]:
Now let's go back to Mark Zuckerberg and the metaverse. So everybody made fun of the metaverse, understandable, because the vision was that we'd all just strap on these goggles and then have meetings as like cartoon avatars. But here's what I think Mark Zuckerberg saw before anybody else. Humans desperately need to anthropomorphize things that can take actions of their own. I was thinking about this the other day because we have a Roomba type vacuum, little round thing, button in the middle, and a stick vacuum that you can push around. We did not name our stick vacuum because the stick vacuum is just a tool that I push around. When we bought our robot vacuum, we almost immediately named it Dusty. Like, I've been tempted to put little googly eyes on it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:18]:
Okay? The robot vacuum moves on its own. It makes decisions, it has a little personality. So we had to name it because that's what humans do. The second something starts taking actions without us touching it, we want to give it a face and a name. And that is what the metaverse is actually going to be used for. I think these are not people, these are AI agents that are in charge of specific tasks. And if you spent any time working with AI, you know that you have multiple different agents working at all times. And what you would really want is when you ask them what they're doing and how they're working in coordination, it would be much easier if they all had faces and avatars and names, even so that you could just say, hey, so and so what are you doing? Because they're basically digital employees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:59]:
And so a lot of your kids, regardless of whether they go into the trades or they go into tech or they go into anything else, are going to spend some of their careers working with AI agents the same way that you have spent your life working with the Internet. And these agents are going to have like names and faces and personalities. Your kid may even sit in a virtual meeting with their team of AI agents around a table and run the meeting. Even if your child is in a trade or runs a small business. I know a lot of people are thinking, wow, like how dystopian is this? But is it more dystopian than what we have now? I actually think it's just a simplistic form of what we have now in a much more human way. That's how I see it. Because it's not more humane and it's not better to sit on a laptop for 10 hours a day. It is much easier and much better and much more human to just talk to a couple of avatar guys on a digital meeting, like a Google Meet or something, and just say, hey, Angie, how's the payroll? Hey Charles, how's the invoicing? That's much easier.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:54]:
And think about, like, how cool that is. Actually, instead of thinking about this, doom and gloom, like, most meetings are a giant waste of time. Okay? So if you can send like three little agents into a virtual conference room to just hash out a schedule or a budget, like draft a little plan while you do something else. Then you just bought yourself your entire afternoon back to work, or be with your family or take a walk or do whatever you want. Robots do robot things, people do people things. And that sounds ridiculous today, but so did email in 1990. So while the metaverse got mocked and laughed at, what it was really pointing at was good user experience. Humans need interfaces that feel human to work with non human co workers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:34]:
And it's going to be very real. This is the part that parents need to hear. Your child isn't going to compete with AI for jobs. Your child is going to work with AI every day, all day, no matter what. They do. They may have coworkers that are AI agents, they may have employees that are AI agents. Their tools will be AI agents, they'll have assistants that are AI agents. Their direct reports eventually may be AI agents that they are managing even when they are entry level employees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:58]:
And this is where the new skill set comes in. Because your child needs to be able to direct and manage and check and improve the work that AI agents produce. Because it's going to help them get ahead, it's going to help them get raises, it's going to help them get better jobs. If your kids are able to sit down and give an AI agent a clear and logical instruction, review what is produced, correct what's wrong, and then use it to do the work of way more people, that young adult's going to be able to get promoted fast. They're going to earn well and they're going to be valuable no matter what industry the wind blows through next. And again, forget that I'm talking about AI, pretend I'm talking about the Internet and you'll see that what I'm saying is true. Because this has happened before. And the key thing is that regardless of how you feel about AI, this is what employers are going to start asking about in interviews.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:38]:
And it's what no college program is teaching. They're busy using AI to create assignments and then to create apps that are not even accurate to catch your child using AI to do those assignments while their professors and staff use AI to grade the assignments. Colleges aren't fast enough to teach technology. They're barely teaching young adults how to do fractions or to even have basic reading comprehension, which by the way is going to be what they need to work with AI tools. And the labor market is just moving so much faster than any college can. And personally, I'm not taking anybody who has an AI degree from a college. A college is not teaching practical application for AI. Somebody that's worked for business, even entry level at 18 years old is going to have more hands on experience with how to solve real problems.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:18]:
So the kids who know how to work with AI that actually know how to do this practically aren't going to come from colleges, they're going to come from homes where the parent knew this was coming and then set them up for it early. Quick word from our sponsor. Just kidding. There are no sponsors, it's just me. If you're 18, 19 or 20 year old, isn't sure what to do or they left college or don't know their next move career wise, we have A one on one service called the Launch program. It helps them to figure out what they actually need from their work, find careers that fit, and then get on a real path into the workforce without the debt. In four weeks they get personal help going from. I don't know what to do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:48]:
Here are the careers that fit. Here's what exactly what I need to learn in order to get that career, how long it's going to take, how I'm going to learn. And they come out with a 12 month plan that tells them exactly, step by step, what to do and how to start that career in less than a year. If you want neutral third party help guiding your child through that process, you can apply for our program@degreefree.com forward slash launch. Now back to the show. So, okay Hannah, I believe you. So the obvious question now is how do I help my child like tomorrow? So there's five things and all of them are free or close to it. And all of them could be started literally this week.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:20]:
1. Put them on an AI tool and then let them use it. Not to do homework, to think. Get them what I would say is a paid account on ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini. Have them use it to complete a project. Not just chatbotting, but plan a trip, buy tickets, build a blueprint for a project or a presentation on a theory they have with citations to present to you. The kids who grow up using AI like an employee are going to be light years ahead of young adults who've only ever used it to hey, write my essay on Abraham Lincoln. There's no substitute for reps, and they need reps to get that clarity of thought and the linear thinking you need in order to use these tool as well.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:56]:
2. Reading. I know, I know. But the single most valuable skill for working with AI is being able to read carefully, spot what's wrong, and then understand nuance. AI produces a ton of text. A kid who can't read critically is going to push garbage through and then not catch stuff. A kid who can read comprehensively is going to catch the garbage and then be able to fix it wisely. So encourage them to read every day.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:21]:
Fiction, nonfiction, business biographies, history. It matters less what they're reading than that they're actually doing it. 3. Learning to dictate to AI in a logical order. One of the craziest things about using AI tools is that you stop typing. You can just speak. The future is the past. People didn't used to type on computers all day.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:37]:
And in the future, people are not going to Type on computers all day. You should just be able to speak and then say, hey, I need some help troubleshooting this. Or please go do this. Just like people used to, when there was more humans helping humans than there were machines helping humans. But the future looks just like the past. So most people will tell you, I make a social media post for my cleaning business and then they get garbage because they didn't prompt it properly, they didn't give it enough information, they didn't give it correct instructions because if you give a human those instructions, you're not going to get anything really good because they don't really know what to do. It's the same thing with AI. So the young adult who can break down a problem to what do I want? Who is it for? What's the context? What's the goal? What are the constraints? And then communicate that to an AI in a logical and clear manner is going to get way better results.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:20]:
And it's not the same as just using it for chat. This is basically just logical thinking and clear communication. Which brings me to the next two things. 4. I cannot stress enough how the most important thing you could do for your child going into the future, aside from reading, is Toastmasters. Any public speaking group. Find your local Toastmasters group and take your child or encourage them to go however you can. It's free or very cheap in most places and it teaches them to organize their thoughts and speak clearly and then think on their feet and communicate under mild pressure.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:51]:
Another great option here would be stand up comedy. But these are the same skills that make somebody good at directing AI and they're the same skills that get people promoted in any field in any era. And number five, chess or Go or like any strategy game. I'd even take D and D or Settlers of Catan at this point. Not necessarily video games and not like casual app games, but a real strategy game that trains the brain to think several steps ahead and then evaluate different trade offs and then see patterns and recognize them and then recover from being in a bad spot. We want the game version of the Art of War. And this is what working with AI actually looks like. You make a decision, you see the result, you make some adjustments and then you try again if it didn't do what you wanted.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:29]:
Chess clubs in a lot of places are free or very low cost. Online chess is free. It costs you nothing. And your child will build these exact kind of critical thinking skills that they're going to need, whether they are freelancers or business owners or employees. Put them on These five things and then watch what happens in six months. So here's what I want parents to walk away with. You don't need to predict the exact job your child is going to have. Nobody can really predict that, because the job your child's going to end up in probably does not exist yet.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:55]:
What you need to do is position them correctly and give them the base level set of skills. Get them comfortable with directing and using AI to accomplish projects and tasks before their peers are. Get them reading and speaking and thinking clearly. Get them used to being pointed at a problem and then having to figure it out using the tools available to them. And these are the skills that transfer across every industry, every role, every new wave of technology, including this one. And think about the alternative for a second, because many people are now in this position. You send your child to a four year degree program that costs $100,000 and actually takes six years. It can't update its curriculum fast enough to keep up with any of this.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:29]:
Even if they're computer science majors, they graduate into a job market that's been reshaped three times while they were sitting in lecture halls learning from people who have never been in the job market at all. They come out with debt and a skill set that's already outdated. Or you skip that because a college will put your child in bankruptcy, exempt debt at any point. They're a business. And you can set your child up with the actual skills employers are about to be desperate for. Because your child needs strategic entry level work. And the best way to get it is having this base level skill set that you don't have to pay anything for. So they can walk into the workforce years ahead of their peers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:00]:
And while they're doing this, they'll be able to gain experience, gain network, get paid. And then if they ever do need to go back to college, they can, because it will always be there and it will always take their money. One of these is very low risk in terms of time, money and energy. And also very testable. You can see whether I'm right within the next six months. The other one, you won't know if you're wrong for four to six years and $100,000 in and a ton of your child's energy. AI isn't coming for your child's job. AI is going to work for your child.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:27]:
But they have to know how to work with it. And if your child knows how to read critically, think linearly and be strategic and communicate clearly, your child's not going to be competing for a job, they're going to be the ones that get hired and promoted. If you're a parent that's facing this decision and feeling really overwhelmed, I hope this perspective was illuminating, and I hope that it gave you a different viewpoint than the one in the headlines the high schools and the colleges. So if you found this perspective helpful, please subscribe and then share this with another parent who's wondering how in the world they're supposed to prepare their child for a job market that looks nothing like the one they grew up in. And this sentence sounds crazy, but your child's going to be having robot pizza parties with their coworkers in the metaverse. The only question is whether your child is going to be proactive about the skills they need going into the market, or whether they're going to be reacting for a safe years from now trying to catch up, and you can put them ahead.