The Only Rare Skills You Need Right Now as AI Destroys Careers

The ai economy, I suspect, will reward these.

A Swedish fintech company made a bold announcement in early 2024. Its ai assistant would take over all customer conversations. It had handled about 2.3 million conversations, 75% of the company’s customer chats. The company said the bot did the work of 700 agents. So it was getting rid of human agents for good. The CEO was very proud. He had frozen hiring. He said, publicly, that ai could do all the jobs of people. Then reality set in. By 2025, he told Bloomberg that while they saved costs, the AI push was hurting service quality for their human customers. So they are back to human agents now. “From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will always be a human if you want,” the CEO said. I love this true story. The AI advantages were good. And so was the damage.

A lot has changed since 2024.

Many ai agents are more capable now. Most companies are going all in. And it’s not just customer conversations. The bots are coming for all types of jobs. The career anxiety people feel makes sense. The future of work is terrifying. Start with what’s happening to young workers. Stanford economists have tracked this in a study they call “Canaries…