Jobs Vs AI: How to build a successful career in the AI age?

How do you succeed in the AI age when everything is changing?

A lot of people are feeling super anxious because we're going through a massive transitional period. We everyone

can see how fast AI is accelerating and in this video I'm going to share how I think about it and it could be helpful for many people because a lot of people are feeling this way. So the summary is

that there are actually more opportunities but it's increasingly essential to keep learning and upskilling. But what should you work on?

upskilling. But what should you work on?

This is what I'll attempt to answer. You

can basically the summary is here which you can check. So one of the problems is that many graduates are finding it hard to find jobs as you as many people know.

Uh lots of the entry- level jobs have now been taken by savings in AI. So

companies are not hiring as well. Or you

could say that graduates are not as well prepared for the new market as they were before.

We're also seeing a challenge with AI and self-driving cars. What's going to happen to the millions of taxi drivers who are not going to have a job anymore?

I will attempt to answer this question.

So, who am I? I am an uh founder of an online platform for international students to apply to Chinese universities and we work with some of the top universities all over the world.

I have unique insights because I have lived in different countries and worked in this problem and helping advising students on their career paths. Uh these

are some of the lessons that I've learned from my 18 years of experience.

But I think I don't need to have 18 years of experience. It's possible to learn this on day one with a 30 minute introduction presentation.

There's a lot I see a lot of people who are saying uh these principles that are absolute truth. Uh it's clear that

absolute truth. Uh it's clear that working hard, getting a job, and getting a mortgage, this pathway may not work anymore for for the new age. And but

there's a lot of people saying, "Oh, you have to build a personal brand. You have

to make content." And then there's people saying, "Oh, you have to learn AI, but how do you make how do you learn AI when AI is able to code itself?" Uh

there's some also people who are saying that all the jobs will be taken by AI.

uh or that you need to start building building a business to create wealth.

But I think it all depends and it depends really on each person which path they should take. I think there's many more paths available but every person is quite different and so it's there

shouldn't be a one-sizefits-all for every person.

So the economy has changed and we're now these are the main eras of the economy.

We went from hunter gatherers to farmers, merchants, industrial age and the digital economy. We're now in a very transitional period between industrial

age and digital economy. Some things are in the digital economy like for example uh videos on YouTube. This is re very much a digital economy. There's other

things that are very much in the industrial age such as manufacturing and a lot of the way economies are structured.

So the digital economy means that in this new era just as when we had entered the industrial age from the previous ages many things in the economy the structure of the economy changed a lot

many of the institutions completely changed uh we saw a massive influx of people going moving to the cities and we also saw huge increase in births

uh as we entered the industrial age we also saw a rise in the middle class as more people re uh receive the rewards of that growth.

So one of the big things about the digital economy is that the economics may be quite different. Uh so if you look at for example before in the industrial age everything was quite

localized. So you would go to the

localized. So you would go to the nearest person in your town and you would ask them or city and you would uh find services that suit you based on the

geography or based on the location. But

with the digital economy, much of the friction of the physical world has been eliminated. And so what this means is

eliminated. And so what this means is that there's very much a power law, which is what you see in digital economics. The bell curve is something

economics. The bell curve is something that you see in real physical economics, uh, such as age, uh, IQ distribution, things like that. And one of the classic

examples of this is discoverability of businesses. And you can see that the

businesses. And you can see that the number one search result on Google for example has by far the majority of the traffic goes to number one. And this is

what's happening in the digital economy.

But the other side of it is that in the industrial age there were a few limited career paths that you could take. You

would usually go to university or you would find a job in a in a trade and then you would take one of these career paths. But we're actually seeing in the

paths. But we're actually seeing in the digital economy uh that there are massive number of new opportunities in different niches. Uh so you can be the

different niches. Uh so you can be the best in the world at some very specific kind of gardening and with the digital age there is this opportunity for you to

be to build in this niche.

So uh there are now unlimited opportunities in different niches.

One of the things is that uh you could say that we are entering an age where the job is no longer as essential as it was before. You can see that the

was before. You can see that the evolution of work happened in three different ages stages. Uh for most of human history there was the era of unfree labor.

You could say this is like slavery in Roman times and surfom where people would work on the farm and then they would receive some of that but the labor

was basically owned by another person.

Then in the industrial age uh we moved towards selling time. So you'd sell your effort and your time for a certain amount. And this works very well because

amount. And this works very well because of the uh structure of the economy and how it was very hard to uh calculate whether one person was performing much

better than others. So everyone was paid very equally. And so the best

very equally. And so the best measurement of that was the time. But as

we get into this age, it's quite different because you can now use leverage. you can now use these new

leverage. you can now use these new tools that are available uh and your output is now very much de uh separated from the time and so you can actually

just start selling results and this is a a different way of looking at it and so you could say that in this age don't look for jobs look for opportunities

and when there are limited number of jobs uh but there's an inf there's always an infinite number of problems and opportunities to solve.

So this is how you could look at the structure of the economy in the different ages. So in the nomads it was

different ages. So in the nomads it was very egalitarian.

Then when you had the farming age it was a very different age where there were a few people who owned most of the land and then everyone else was working on the land and they were less welloff than

the land owners which were very centralized in the trade. say every

economy has a very different structure of the society.

When we went into the mer mercantalist era uh there was a rising middle class of people who could trade uh internationally and then as you went

into the industrial age we have this booming middle class which is coincided with the massive increase in birth rates and now it looks like as we enter the

digital age the middle class is going into two different directions. So some

of this middle class is moving up and then some of those who have less uh relevant skills that don't match the requirements in the market are um becoming less welloff and so we're

seeing a split in the uh middle class and with a lot of people in society which presents massive challenges. This

problem it doesn't happen immediately.

What happens is that you can feel that rising living costs keep increasing and it's uh there are rising expenses every year the things get more expensive and

this is how people this is what happens when it's moving into the less welloff and less unskilled and I think this is the path that we're headed if our economic system doesn't change but I think we will have a different we will

need to have different economic system and we will need to change a lot of things about our economy uh one of them is that uh universal basic income is one

solution to this which means that u many people will have less of these rising living costs and I actually think that uh we are making a mistake and we need

to upgrade many things about our economy as we enter this age uh one of those is the infrastructure if you think about it housing healthcare education uh these

actually meet the the definition of infrastructure and uh they they are more like roads than they are a market good.

Uh but I I can make this is a whole another subject. Uh in this video I'm

another subject. Uh in this video I'm going to talk about how I think it works for the individual and how you should be thinking about it. So this is what happens as we enter from the industrial

age to the digital age. Uh and you basically don't want to be in the less welloff. You have to upskill. It's

welloff. You have to upskill. It's

absolutely essential. And this is where the the opportunities are. uh and it's extremely necessary to upskill and it may maybe be that this is not how

structure society needs to be structured. Maybe we can just upskill

structured. Maybe we can just upskill everyone and move them up. Maybe that is possible and maybe we need to move everyone from the middle skill to the high skill and we need massive

upskilling.

So I'm talking about all of these ideas but why is it changing? Why is there this uh difference now between before and now? Why is it that you can now uh

and now? Why is it that you can now uh do something and then it has this massive impact and it can it can impact people beyond your time. And this is

because of these four different things, four types of leverage that we have. uh

we have uh we've had these all in different stages but now the power of content and the power of code which are basically quite similar content is

running on code. Uh these just give you huge reach and the ability to do things that you would never be able to do before. Before we are very much limited

before. Before we are very much limited by a physical environment, our our time.

But now we can make code that it we can automate it once and it runs forever to millions of people. We also have this ability to create content uh like I'm

doing now that can run every day. People

can watch it. I just need to do it once and if it's if people like it, millions of people can see it. And this is what we're seeing with how the economy is

reshaping. But there are four basic

reshaping. But there are four basic types uh of the of leverage. One of them is capital. So you can put money to

is capital. So you can put money to work. Uh you can invest in something and

work. Uh you can invest in something and then it can gain interest. You can use code. You can create code that does some

code. You can create code that does some task that you don't need to do anymore.

Then you can sell it. You can create content. You can write a book. You can

content. You can write a book. You can

create social media content that millions of people see. And then you can also work with other people which is one of the traditional ways of scaling and and getting much more leverage is to

work with a group of people in and align all their incentives everyone's incentives and you can then reach much more together than you could on your

own. So this is uh what the types of

own. So this is uh what the types of leverage are that are available in the economy. But I think there's uh there's

economy. But I think there's uh there's a lot of dogma for example that some people are saying you need to build a personal brand or you need to learn AI

but what I think is that every person is very different and which of these four you should focus on is depends on you and your skills. It's essential to

understand all of them, but in order to reach your potential, you need to know which one you are best at, which one to focus on, and which one you're weak at, and how to mitigate that weakness

because usually some people may be good at one or two of these. And then they you can just make an amazing career in only capital or in only code. You don't

need to do the others. Um but there's some people who may be good at two and I'm going to talk a bit more about that.

So this is the types of leverage and this is how you can do some things and it has this massive impact. This is the impact of technology but whenever there's a trend there's always a counter

trend and the counter trend uh just like it's called it's like the duality. It's

like the yin and the yang. It's like

before we have labor and capital.

We have reason and emotion.

Everything has this duality. When you

have one force, you have another force which is the opposite. And in the intell in this era of the digital economy, we are going to see another force which is

just as important and that is humanity.

That is our ability to be people and our human side. and they are deeply

human side. and they are deeply connected and I believe right now we are seeing this massive rise in the leverage side in AI in content uh but it's going

to follow with this massive rise in the human side and what makes us human as leverage becomes more important so does the human side and what does the

human side mean it means care empathy judgment taste and alignment we need to align these uh leverage and these tools to serve us.

So you can put it in this quadrant here and you can look at you can place every job into this quadrant and you can say is it low leverage or is it low humanity

or is it high leverage or high humanity and you could you could you could put uh some jobs like data entry in the leverage low leverage and low humanity

if you're doing it manually that would be uh low leverage and low humanity you could put taxi drivers taxi driving.

Obviously, if for someone who doesn't speak, uh there's no human connection because that can be that can be a side of it. Um you can put any of these tasks

of it. Um you can put any of these tasks like robotics and uh like in working in a factory or or sh stacking shelves in the low leverage and low humanity side.

And what we're seeing in this stage is that everything is moving away from this bottom side where it has low humanity and low leverage into the higher leverage or the high humanity side. So

it's going it the bottom left quadrant of all the jobs is just is going and moving into the other areas. So the

opportunities now would be into uh leverage such as uh creating self-driving cars for reaching massive amounts of uh people when you uh

self-driving cars for for taxis or the human side which is things like care and community and uh these kind of things

like teaching which you can which is essential to do one-on-one. But then you can combine high humanity and high leverage into create this where you

understand the to you use the tools of leverage uh the four tools of leverage or whichever one and then you combine it with humanity. So this is an idea of how

with humanity. So this is an idea of how they can be com compared. And so these are some examples of different different jobs that you can look at between that

have uh various levels of leverage and humanity and there are opportunities in both sides and they ultimately need to be

aligned together. So if you want to

aligned together. So if you want to develop yourself in these aspects then the learning side and the humanity side.

If you just improve yourself in the leverage side, you can do that. But you

it's also an advantage to develop yourself in both sides, the human side as well. So these are the tools of

as well. So these are the tools of leverage. And I would also say that uh

leverage. And I would also say that uh in this era it becomes much more important to be a super performer and to

be extremely capable. And so you can actually look at internal things and internal tools of leverage that can enable you to have a big impact. And one

of the most important things now is just being able to learn. And this is probably the foundational uh principle of this age of this digital age is just

being a good learner. And then you can have these multiple uh aspects of yourself that can enable you to perform at a highest level. So uh being able to

visualize goal set and use your own focus because in this age the limited thing that we have now is not capital.

We have so much capital. It's not uh labor and it's attention. Attention is

the only limited resource in this age.

So it's essential to be able to master your attention and uh to channel your energy and attention and to understand the world. And so you can look at it as

the world. And so you can look at it as having these internal tools uh working on yourself, improving yourself and your ability to to direct your attention and then external which is like how do you

use the levers to achieve your goals and there are two sides of it.

So the fact is if you're not using leverage in an in a leveraged world in the leveraged economy you are being outco competed and you're underliving

your potential. And uh an example of

your potential. And uh an example of this could be uh uh this would could be like the leverage gap. So the example would be someone who is making baskets

and selling them on the side of the road who is doing it individually. Uh this

could be usually this is not happening that much in UK but it could be happening in many countries. Uh but if someone is if that same person was

creating Tik Tok videos was created an online shop and worked with a group of influencers to have a bigger reach and

uh invest reinvested somehow into the using capital got investment to to develop the products of the basket that would be these things for leverage.

So these are the uh ways of looking the internal side which I mentioned. Uh

there's a few ways that you can learn really well. Uh AI is an incredible tool

really well. Uh AI is an incredible tool because it can feedback help you to learn. Mentors uh you can hire people to

learn. Mentors uh you can hire people to help you learn feedback loops and then it's all about absorbing this knowledge trying it and attempting it. And then

these are the different ink internal skills of of leverage that become much more important enable you to uh use the uh tools of leverage much better. And so

these are the different uh tools of leverage and what is important about them. And so for example with capital

them. And so for example with capital when you're allocating money logical judgment is much more important being able to uh separate yourself from the

emotion understanding risk and being able to allocate it and code is more about thinking in systems and

architecture. So it's designing it and

architecture. So it's designing it and it's all about logic and communication and prioritization. Content is about

and prioritization. Content is about understanding the audience uh expression and storytelling and presenting it psychology and uh then distribution is

not just about it's understanding the platforms and then people is about developing talent judgment being able to cast a vision attracts people leading with energy and inspiring

having a purpose and then designing a certain systems that have incentives and KPIs. So these are the different

KPIs. So these are the different internal uh leverage tool to tools of leverage that you can use.

So what happens in this economy which is different to before is that uh before when you're in a path it's an advantage

to work hard but in this economy it matters much more which direction you're going than how hard you're working. You

need to work hard of course uh but it's essential to be working in the right direction on the right things. It's much

more important because in this kind of economy when you can have a massive impact uh it's you want to be able to choose the lane that you're and the target that you're going to it's not

just about working hard. Uh so but sometimes this feels weird and counterintuitive. You feel like somehow

counterintuitive. You feel like somehow when you work hard you should have some reward. You deserve it. But it's not how

reward. You deserve it. But it's not how it works in this economy, in this age.

What matters is the results. And uh

that's one of the shifts.

So I actually have a quiz at the end of this video which asks you a few questions and then you can uh you can check what your type of leverage is, what your strength and what your

weakness is. And so you can uh check it

weakness is. And so you can uh check it and try it at the end of this video. So

these are the four types of leverage. Uh

one of the reasons this is key is because uh everyone is different and everyone has different advantages and disadvantages.

So uh another thing is that you can use leverage together to combine to create something else. You

can stack leverage. So you can make this flywheel of uh capital allocation creating code and content. And there are many successful people. You can look at

Elon Musk for example how he's using multiple types of capital uh content and code and say for example X which influences and he's just using basically

all of these and this is the uh one of the super formulas is just to use all of them or combine all of them. On the

other side, it's possible to get stuck in a kind of low leverage trap, low leverage loop trap where you are doing work that is not of high leverage and

you are stuck and you may not be able to get out of that doing lowle leverage tasks. And so it's essential to try and

tasks. And so it's essential to try and break out of that. And I know that I've sometimes had this uh before where I'm doing low leverage tasks and need to

break out of it and to find some solution to do it. So these are some of the traps and the ways and then how you can get out of it. You can basically try

and work out what it is like what is the bottleneck in the uh in your work and then uh use it. It's also quite

interesting that economies and companies and uh empires in history uh they have also had some use leverage as an

advantage. So you can also use this

advantage. So you can also use this framework as in as an individual but as a company and looking at history in how

different empires uh used leverage to to have an advantage and to w to win over others. So looking at the taxi driver

others. So looking at the taxi driver problem. So how can taxi drivers use

problem. So how can taxi drivers use leverage? I was once in a taxi and the

leverage? I was once in a taxi and the taxi driver asked me how can I find opportunities and so this is uh one of my answers to that. Uh they're basically

not going to be taxi drivers jobs. And

I' I've been thinking about this problem quite a lot. What what do you do when uh how do you retrain these number of people? How do you get them to be

people? How do you get them to be productive again? they can use two to

productive again? they can use two to two uh solutions to it. One of them is to use leverage uh to because they are in the bottom left quadrant which is the low leverage low humanity side. So they

can either move into the high leverage or the higher humanity side. So if we look at the higher leverage side, um the taxi driver could uh create

content to reach like create a podcast or create some kind of um content uh about it, record videos, do interviews,

uh change what it means the as a driver to uh create some kind of content. this

may not be the uh really the best way from from some they could move from the uh people they could uh look to be

become au community builder they can look into the business of buying taxis it's essent so there's like multiple areas that can expand into but this is

the other side which is the um is to go into the human side which is uh to be to focus more on the local expertise. So

for example, could be like a local tour guide uh can learn more into uh personalized experience um and offering

premium uh taxi support. There's always

going to be a need for people to uh provide personal support to people in need. It's going to be a smaller part of

need. It's going to be a smaller part of the market, but it's still going to exist. And there's probably could also

exist. And there's probably could also be a requirements in the safety side and assuring people. So there's while the

assuring people. So there's while the bulk of the market is likely to be completely um reduced because of self-driving, there's also going to be a

massive need for uh human side uh in different areas. And then in terms of

different areas. And then in terms of leverage for taxi drivers, there's multiple uh opportunities to create other uh other areas and to go into

leverage. or it could just be about

leverage. or it could just be about moving into a different market that doesn't have the same dynamics.

So here are a few principles in what I think is essential in this digital age.

The first is that learning is in incredibly important needs to be continuous learning. If you can learn

continuous learning. If you can learn anything, it's the core of everything.

It's the number one skill that's needed in this economy. There are many resources online. But the question that

resources online. But the question that everyone still has is what should you learn? because when you are faced

learn? because when you are faced against uh AI what can you do that other can't do and so that's why uh demand and supply discrepancy is essential because

now we're in a economy which is much more uh competitive so I actually spent a long time not really not full totally understanding

this that if you work on two problems the one that has a demand supply discrepancy has a much is just much more valuable to work on if there are so many

other people who are doing it. If you

open a pizza restaurant next to uh one area, you're not going to get paid as much as if you are going into a field where there's massive lack of talent.

And so it's essential to think of things as like a market and then putting yourself in the market. So there are lots of opportunities in the UK in

plumbing in electric as electricians in AISOB security and these could be short-term opportunities or they there are it's it's a way of thinking about

things in the demand supply discrepancy because it's basically a market. The

other strategy is to hyper specialize and this is what uh my company did. We

focused first on one very specific law school. Then we expanded to multiple law

school. Then we expanded to multiple law schools. Then we expanded to recruitment

schools. Then we expanded to recruitment of Chinese for Chinese universities. Now

we're going into international uh global admissions which is students studying abroad.

So this is a really good strategy because you can focus on one specific niche hyper niche and then become the best in the world at it. And then when you've expanded to reach the market size

you can then expand. And this is what many successful companies like eBay did.

They focused on one very big uh PayPal did. They focused on one niche then

did. They focused on one niche then expanded after that. So there are lots and lots of niches and lots of opportunities that most of the big companies are overlooking and they're always going to overlook because they

are focusing on the big market picture.

And so you can learn, you can grow in that niche before expanding to an adjacent niche. The other principle is

adjacent niche. The other principle is to use leverage. And because we're in a leverage economy, it's essential to learn about leverage and to learn how to use it.

You can also combine it uh for much better impact. Then mindset becomes much

better impact. Then mindset becomes much more important because it's all about how you think and how you direct your energy. And there's a great saying how

energy. And there's a great saying how how you look at the world reflects what you see back. And this is completely true. One of the other principles is to

true. One of the other principles is to be location independent. Because if you can if you are in one market and then you move to another market now you understand two markets so you are

learning a lot more from the other market maybe you can bring it back you can get unique insights you can work between them if there's a market uh if there's a opportunity or you can just

choose which one is better so you can go back or you can stay where you are and you can just choose. So everything

points to being location independent and trying or learning in a different market.

The other principle is that the internet is the frontier and opportunities are always at the frontier. Uh the internet is constantly expanding and this is where opportunities are. Yeah. The other

principle is to build proof of work because it doesn't matter as much about your CV. It matters more uh what kind of

your CV. It matters more uh what kind of things you've created and what work you've actually done. Then the other principle is to develop your human side.

human side. I think people are underappreciating how important the human side is. The human side matters more now rather than less. If you have

an aligned AI, it will win market share in the long run. Understanding

the market, understanding people is a huge advantage and it's something that AI cannot do. judgment understanding

creates better products, creates better content and allows you to allocate better. And all of leverage is

better. And all of leverage is ultimately like right now at least controlled by humans and it's for humans. So develop your human side. It

humans. So develop your human side. It

be helps you to make you happier. So

these are the this is the dogma.

Uh work hard, get a job. It matters more what you work on than how hard you work.

Working hard is is important but it m matters more which direction you go. You

have to build a personal brand and make content. Content and AI are one of the

content. Content and AI are one of the opportunities now but what you work on depends on your personality.

All the jobs will be taken by AI. The

nature of jobs is changing and there are new opportunities.

Start a business to build wealth.

uh it's essential to think more entrepreneurally and understand the market and humans are now more important.

So this is a quiz that you can take to help you understand which do you think you are best at which to focus on. You

can think about uh which of these four types of leverage is energizing for you.

What do you hate and what do you not wish to do? Like where do you naturally gravitate? Where do you where does your

gravitate? Where do you where does your language what do you naturally think in?

Do you one of the ways is you can think of where do you get the most energy from? What excites you? There's

from? What excites you? There's

something about that that is uh there's some intelligence in following what excites you and what your how your energy feels. And what do you hate and

energy feels. And what do you hate and what do you feel you really hate?

And what do you also have a head start in based on your previous career previous work or your what you've done so far?

and uh what do you feel really satisfied? So it's good to focus on one

satisfied? So it's good to focus on one of these parts and then you can narrow down once you know which one to focus on to narrow down as well. But it's

essential to understand all of them.

These are some of the common types of leverage uh types archetypes of people who and what they're best at and you can

also have like a a dual kind of leverage. So you have one and the other.

leverage. So you have one and the other.

So we have move we are moving from the industrial age to the digital age and there are different rules that apply in this economy. So we need to change how

this economy. So we need to change how we think about it. The problem is the AI is automating the economy but working hard and getting a job following the set

path it no longer guarantees success.

The digital economy is a winner takes takes all in terms of leverage and it all it but it also creates unlimited opportunities in different niches and it

also makes the human side much more important and so you can choose to focus on the leverage or the human side or both. The solution is that uh to use

both. The solution is that uh to use leverage or to combine with humanity or to focus on more on the comm human side.

Uh the ideal path is to operate in high hum human humanity and high leverage quadrant using purpose and using tools

and low leverage low humanity tasks. If

you're in one of those you're it is most at risk of being automated and likely will be automated.

Learning and upskilling is essential.

It's essential to engage in continuous learning and find uh one opportunity is to find a niche, master that form of leverage and then keep developing your

human side. If you think that was

human side. If you think that was helpful for you, uh let me know in the comments what is your leverage type. Do

you have any questions? And uh thank you. Good luck. And I will share some

you. Good luck. And I will share some links as well about how you can take a quiz. And if you're interested in the

quiz. And if you're interested in the quiz, I will put the quiz in the description that you can take to find your leverage type and to help map a

pathway for you in the future. Chess.