On 6 August 2025, Forbes published a piece about some of the top American students – particularly from MIT and Harvard – who chose to leave university, citing fears of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and even the possibility that they “would not live to graduate” due to the threat it poses to humanity.
- Alice Blair, an MIT student, dropped out because she feared she would not live to graduate due to the threat of AGI. She now works as a technical writer at the non-profit Centre for AI Safety and does not plan to return to MIT.
- A Harvard graduate, Nikola Jurković, remarked: “If your career is going to be automated away by the end of the decade, every year you spend in college takes a year off your short career.”
- Adam Kaufman, a Harvard student, also left his studies to work full-time at Redwood Research, an organisation studying deceptive or harmful AI systems.
- Expert Gary Marcus (NYU) believes that human extinction due to AGI is extremely unlikely. He highlights unresolved technical issues such as errors in reasoning and AI hallucinations, and describes the imminent arrival of AGI as marketing hype.
- A survey of 326 Harvard students found that half are worried AI will affect their career prospects, and 40% believe the risk of extinction from AI should be treated as seriously as pandemics or nuclear war.
These stories dominate headlines, amplifying the notion that retreat from academia is the only rational response.
We are writing this piece for students because what follows may be the most important article we have ever produced on technology. Not because it explains how AI works or predicts its next breakthrough, but because it speaks directly to those who will live, study, and build in its shadow. The fear of artificial intelligence is real — we see it driving some of the brightest minds to abandon their education, convinced that the future has already been stolen from them. This article exists to argue the opposite: that your choices, not the machine’s, will define your path. If you understand the landscape, if you learn to act with conviction, and if you build from genuine interest rather than fear, you will not only survive in the AI era — you will thrive in it.
In the following sections, we will set out the core theses on which a meaningful life and career can be built, even in an age of rapid automation. These are not trendy slogans or productivity hacks, but enduring values — curiosity, courage, integrity, and focus — which no algorithm can devalue. They were relevant in the upheavals of the past, they remain essential today, and they will still matter in every future shaped by AI.
Short-Term vs Long-Term Shifts
Bill Gates once remarked that people overestimate long-term change and underestimate short-term change. The next three to five years will see AI reshape labour markets in visible ways — automating routine, altering entry-level roles, creating entirely new niches. This is not the end of careers; it is the opening of fresh terrain. Students who act early, adapt, and step into these short-term shifts will gain positions of strength long before slower institutions even recognise them.
Draw the Map
Machines will always “dig deeper”: they analyse datasets, optimise details, and unearth patterns at a pace no human can match. What machines cannot do is connect those details into a map of the wider landscape. That is the task of the modern full-stack professional: not to be a shallow generalist, but a cartographer who charts how technology, markets, ethics, and regulation interlock. The value is not in exhaustive depth everywhere, but in knowing where to anchor and how to link domains together.
Talent Transfers; Labels Do Not
The danger of clinging to a professional label is that it narrows your identity. Talent is transferable: if you can create value in one domain, you can adapt and do so in another. Boundaries blur in the age of AI, and those who define themselves by capability rather than job title will carry their strength into whichever field opens next.
Interest Beats Income
AI will rapidly commoditise routine labour. Chasing salaries leads you directly into the territory where algorithms compete. By contrast, genuine interest generates work that resists replacement. Projects born of curiosity and conviction are where originality lives, and originality is the only defensible source of both income and influence in a world of automation.
Success Follows Time and Motivation
It is possible to achieve mastery in almost any discipline if you are motivated and willing to dedicate enough time. Interest is the compass: it gives energy for long hours and resilience against setbacks. Students who follow their real curiosities, rather than chasing what seems safe or lucrative, are the ones who build lasting expertise. The combination of motivation and consistent effort will open doors in fields that at first seem closed.
The Work–Life Balance
The popular mantra of “work–life balance” often masks disengagement. Balance is invoked when the work itself is uninspiring. When you are solving the right problem, life and work fuse into a single stream — not burnout, but alignment. The antidote to exhaustion is not stricter hours, but work that actually matters to you.
Careers Are Non-Linear
The old ladder of predictable promotions is obsolete. Careers now resemble portfolios: collections of projects, artefacts, collaborations, and bets. A title is only a lagging indicator of value created. Resilience comes from building a portfolio that diversifies experience and demonstrates capability across shifting domains.
AI Is the New Electricity
Electricity once reshaped entire industries; the internet and smartphones did the same. AI is no different: it is the new baseline, the new electricity. The choice is binary: adopt early and shape the future, or refuse and become background noise.
Education as Anchor and Sails
The debate “degree or dropout” is a false choice. Formal education anchors fundamentals and offers networks. Informal education — side projects, mentors, bootcamps — provides the sails that catch new winds. The future belongs to those who can combine both: rigorous depth from institutions, speed and flexibility from informal channels.
Adaptability Beats Static Knowledge
The world is shifting faster than any curriculum can keep pace. Textbooks are outdated the day they are printed; job descriptions change yearly. What endures is not a fixed stock of knowledge but the ability to adapt — to learn fast, to discard what no longer works, and to put new tools to use immediately. Adaptability is the true universal skill of the twenty-first century. Those who cultivate it will navigate change with confidence, while those who cling to yesterday’s expertise will be left behind.
Continuous Learning
Education is no longer something that begins in school and ends with a diploma. In the AI era, constant learning is the only baseline. The old model of education — slow, linear, tied to fixed curricula — is finished. What lives now is learning driven by personal interest, fuelled by curiosity and accelerated by the very tools some students fear. With AI, every resource, explanation, and example is already at your fingertips. The challenge is not access to knowledge but the discipline to use it. Those who treat AI as their personal tutor, research partner, and sparring opponent will outpace those who wait for formal systems to catch up.
Visualise What Will Be
Most students design careers by imitating what exists now. That is a path to obsolescence. The stronger approach is to imagine what role you want to play in 2030 and work backwards. By defining tomorrow’s responsibilities today, you align your learning and projects with the world that is coming, not the one already fading.
Choose Your Circle
Your peers and partner shape your trajectory more than any curriculum. A strong circle of ambitious, curious colleagues is the most powerful accelerant. A partner who shares your appetite for risk and growth multiplies your potential; the wrong partner subtracts from it. Treat these choices with the gravity of selecting a co-founder. Surround yourself with active, positive people who act, not merely comment.
Keep Your Battery Charged
Think of a person as a battery: a source of energy with a certain capacity, quality, and level of charge. Some batteries can barely power small household devices; others are strong enough to drive entire systems. What matters is not only the charge you hold but your willingness to use it. Many people stay permanently “discharged”: full of opinions, empty of action. Others rise from the chair, expend their energy, and change their surroundings. Your progress depends on surrounding yourself with people whose batteries are sufficiently charged — those who act, not merely exist. Energy is not a gift, it is a choice: every day you decide whether to invest it in growth or waste it into nothing. Growth itself is the act of spending energy wisely, turning each day’s discharge into a step upwards. The lesson is simple: ideas without energy remain fantasies. Charge yourself, and act.
Risk as the New Stability
Stable jobs in replaceable roles are illusions. They are the first to be automated. Real stability lies in the willingness to take risk — small, fast, and frequent. Opportunities in the AI era open suddenly and close quickly. The winners are those who act decisively when the window appears, not those who hesitate waiting for guarantees.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Large corporations move slowly, protecting old models. Breakthroughs increasingly come from small teams who recombine AI with other fields — health, education, culture, energy — and move faster. For the first time, students have tools, distribution, and even capital within reach. Entrepreneurship is no longer the marginal path; it is the central one. It is astonishing how many overlook this in an era of unprecedented leverage.
Attention Is the Scarce Asset
Information is free; attention is expensive. Every app, feed, and even AI tool competes to capture yours. The competitive advantage lies in ruthless prioritisation: choosing where to direct energy and ignoring the noise. In the coming decade, those who manage attention with discipline will achieve disproportionately more.
Intellectual Autonomy
Relying blindly on generative models is a path to intellectual atrophy. AI is fast but fallible. Outsourcing your judgement makes you a shallow operator of prompts rather than a thinker. The edge remains in independent analysis, verification, and critical reasoning — skills no machine can substitute.
Identity Beyond the Job Title
If you define yourself only by a job title, every career disruption feels existential. True stability comes from anchoring identity in standards and values: what kind of problems you choose to solve, and how you conduct yourself. Titles change; standards endure.
Financial Freedom
Interest, talent, and energy are the foundations — but what about financial success? It rarely arrives on its own. Money follows transformation: scaling your personal success into something larger than yourself. Ask anyone who has achieved it. A skilled designer becomes wealthy not by taking on more clients, but by building a design studio. A talented builder creates freedom not by laying more bricks, but by taking responsibility for whole projects. An inventive engineer doesn’t stop at a prototype, but launches a product into the world. Financial freedom is not a separate pursuit; it is the by-product of expanding your own capacity and multiplying it through systems, people, and scale.
Conclusion
Walking away from education because you fear extinction or automation is not caution — it is surrender. Every generation faces upheavals; few are given tools as powerful as those now in your hands. AI is not a verdict passed upon you, it is the raw material of your era. Use university as your anchor, projects and peers as your sails. Keep your battery charged, invest energy into real action, and choose circles that lift you. Follow interest, not fear, and let time and persistence transform that interest into mastery.
Financial freedom, influence, and fulfilment are not gifts: they are the by-products of scaling your personal success into systems, ventures, and innovations. That path is open to you in a way no previous generation has known. The AI age is not a storm to hide from — it is an ocean to cross. Build the ship, take the helm, and move.
About the Author
Oleksii Smirnov is the CEO of Software Planet Group. Born in the USSR, he grew up during the turbulence of perestroika, independence, the collapse of socialism, and the first arrival of personal computers. Though he deliberately chose to study management rather than computer science, his entire career has been devoted to building in IT. He founded the first IT company in Cherkasy, Ukraine, and was among the early pioneers of the Agile movement. Today he lives and works in London, continuing to shape technology and business at the intersection of software, innovation, and leadership.