Coffee Chats Won’t Save You. Start Hedging Before AI Eats Your Job.
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It’s September at Cornell, and that means a few things. Classes are in full swing. Freshmen are crowding the front rows after every club information session. Libe Cafe and Zeus are packed wall-to-wall with students “coffee chatting” in hopes of breaking into their dream clubs. And, most importantly, it’s the season when consulting and finance recruiters descend on Ithaca: hosting events, talking to students, and laying out the timelines for their “coveted” entry-level roles.
At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing at an unprecedented rate, competing with cognitive tasks traditionally completed by humans. ChatGPT’s latest model can build a client-ready slide deck in minutes. Anthropic’s Claude can run through a financial model and generate a cost-benefit analysis in seconds. Top consulting firms have already rolled out their own internal AI models to automate the routine tasks once handled by junior staff. In other words, AI models can now produce the traditional bread and butter of interns, junior analysts, and associates faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. So what does that mean for our generation of students pouring their heart and soul into recruitment? Are they training to be the number one backup when an AI model fails?
I’m not saying that Bain and Morgan Stanley will disappear tomorrow. But, the pattern is clear in that there have already been fewer entry-level hires, slower promotions, and firms are filling senior roles laterally instead of promoting from within. Firms are breaking down the old apprenticeship model of “work hard for five years and move up.” The ladder students once counted on—working hard now for a payoff decades later—no longer offers stability. So, if you’re seeking to recruit for these firms because you want stability, you’re betting on one of the first industries AI is headed to dismantle. Now, even if you buy my argument that AI is coming for entry-level jobs, it’s still hard to pivot. It’s hard to tell your parents you’re not chasing the six-figure salary they want to brag about. It’s hard to step away from a path that feels validated and well-worn. But, it’s important to recognize that a large consulting firm’s job offer doesn’t mean much when the workflows you’re trained to optimize are the very ones AI already does better. In a world where algorithms move capital faster than humans ever could, a bulge-bracket bank title won’t carry the same weight.
If you’ve followed me this far, you’ll see that practicing case studies for an automatable job is actually riskier than hedging your bets across multiple paths. Instead, the smarter play is to diversify your skills and options, experiment early, and anchor yourself in spaces where AI still hits bottlenecks and humans still have leverage. But how can you tell the difference between a fragile path and a resilient one? Begin asking questions like:
Does this role rely on trust, judgment, or human presence?
Does it require physical dexterity or improvisation in unpredictable settings?
Or, is it mostly pattern recognition and synthesis (exactly what AI is best at)?
So, you’re probably also wondering: “Okay, so, where should we be directing these questions?”
Not everyone needs to go launch the next OpenAI or raise a seed round tomorrow. But Cornell students need to stop treating consulting and finance like they’re the only markers of prestige. There are smarter bets, and they fall into a few clear categories:
Human-first careers: Anchor yourself in jobs that are rooted in presence, trust, and judgment. Think public defenders, surgeons, teachers, social workers, diplomats, and entrepreneurs running brick-and-mortar businesses. These paths may not scream prestige in the current Cornell culture, but they will be resilient when AI makes knowledge work abundant and cheap.
Hybrid hedges: Even if you’re still taking that consulting offer next summer, start hedging now. Launch a Substack, build a side project, freelance on design or policy, or learn a trade skill that requires manual labor. The students who test out new paths cheaply and early will outpace the ones who wait until their firms quietly automate their analyst classes.
Frontier and builder roles: If you’re obsessed with AI, ride the wave, but don’t settle for being a cog in the machine at someone else’s firm. Work in AI policy, safety, research, AI investing, entrepreneurship, or integration, which fall outside of being the traditional cog in a machine. Join a scrappy team that is shaping how AI gets used, or build your own.
I know all these headlines aren’t easy to hear. For decades, the formula was simple: grind in college, land the offer, climb the ladder. But AI has rewritten that equation, and it’s time to adjust how you calculate success. Because soon, the question our kids will ask us won’t be “Did you get that Goldman offer in college?” It will instead be “How did you prepare for the biggest economic upheaval in world history?”
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For specific, concrete, and actionable recommendations, check out the Game Plan our team at Encode, the world’s largest AI policy nonprofit, has put together.
