Chapter 22 · 13 min read

Preparing for Careers That Don't Exist Yet

Parent Perspective · Annette, mother of three, former teacher

"My daughter is sixteen and she wants to be a marine biologist. I am a practical person and I have spent a lot of time worrying that she's heading towards an overcrowded, underfunded field with limited jobs. A friend of mine, who runs a data science team, sat down with her one evening and said something I haven't been able to forget. He said: 'In five years, the most in-demand marine biologists will be the ones who can use AI to model ocean ecosystems at a scale no human research team could manage alone. The biology is the rare part. Loads of people can do the data; not many people care deeply enough about the ocean to spend their career on it. Your passion is an asset.' She sat up straighter. I sat up straighter. He had reframed the whole thing."

Here's the question that most parents dread being asked by their teenager: "What career should I go into?"

The dread is well-founded. Not because you don't care, but because the honest answer is: "I don't fully know. And neither does anyone else."

A widely quoted, and widely debated, 2017 estimate by Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future put it provocatively: 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 hadn't been invented at the time of their study. [1] Treat the exact number as a conversation-starter rather than a measurement; it was an expert estimate, not a calculation. But the direction of travel it points to is real. Genuine job titles that didn't exist ten years ago include AI Ethicist, Prompt Engineer, Synthetic Data Scientist, Human-AI Interaction Designer, Climate Intelligence Analyst, and Digital Therapeutics Designer. A decade from now, there will be equivalents we can't yet name.

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In this chapter

1The Picks and Shovels Framework
2The Known Emerging Careers
3Why Broad Exploration Is Better Than Early Specialisation
4Building Entrepreneurial Mindset at Home
5The Conversation About Careers Without Creating Anxiety
6Chapter Summary and Key Takeaways
7Reflection Questions for Parents
8References

2,790 words, about 13 minutes to read. Part Six of Raising AI-Ready Children.