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When asked about the ongoing labor crisis and where things are heading for Americans, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent isn’t mincing words.
In a Fox Business interview, he admitted that young graduates and white-collar professionals across the country face a difficult job market because of disruption from artificial intelligence (1).
When asked by Maria Bartiromo at Fox Business what he would do if he were a young graduate facing the current job market, he offered quick advice.
“I don’t know what job I would go into, Maria. But I can tell you, I would be trained up in AI … What I would do is become an AI native.”
The message lands at a time of profound change.
Here’s why you should consider adopting some AI skills, regardless of your age, industry and experience.
Job losses from AI aren’t a distant prediction but an ongoing reality. As of the end of November, AI was directly cited as a reason for nearly 55,000 job cuts in 2025, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (2).
Young Americans are particularly vulnerable to this disruption, as the unemployment rate for recent college graduates hit 5.6% by the end of 2025 (3). Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said in December he believes the rate could hit 25% within the next five years if current trends continue (4).
Dario Amodei, CEO of AI firm Anthropic, had an even more terrifying prediction. He told Axios that nearly half of all entry-level white-collar workers could be obsolete within five years because of AI (5).
Young, entry-level workers are at the forefront of this trend, but as the technology improves, older workers could be at risk as well. Goldman Sachs predicts up to 14% of global jobs could be disrupted by AI, under specific assumptions about the technology’s improvement and adoption over time (6). That’s 1 in 7 workers.
With the threat of automation looming over us all, acquiring new and unique skills to work with AI could be the equivalent of a career insurance policy.
Read More: Approaching retirement with no savings? Don’t panic, you’re not alone. Here are 6 easy ways you can catch up (and fast)
The pace of change in the AI industry can feel overwhelming. But the good news is that this rapid change also creates a level playing field. New tools and upgrades are launched every few months, and if you master even one of them, you could be miles ahead of your peers.
With that in mind, the best place to start is to simply sign up and practice one of the leading AI tools on the market. As of mid-2025, ChatGPT had roughly 80% market share, followed by Perplexity, Microsoft’s CoPilot and Google’s Gemini, according to web analytics platform Statcounter (7).
Frequently using any of these tools could put you in the small minority of AI natives. According to Menlo Ventures data from mid-2025, only 19% of U.S. adults interact with AI on a daily basis (8).
Once you’re comfortable with the tools, consider sharpening your skills with specialized (and often free) online courses. Google’s AI Essentials course package is popular with beginners, while Microsoft offers an introduction to Vibe Coding on its Learn platform.
The OpenAI Academy and Anthropic Academy can help you master specialized skills like prompt engineering.
It doesn’t take too long to catch up. But the learning curve could get steeper if you delay adopting any of these skills.
Artificial intelligence is becoming a general-purpose technology, on par with electricity and the internet. Learning AI skills is becoming a baseline requirement, not a niche advantage. AI native professionals have the potential to work faster, make better decisions and automate low-value tasks.
Those who ignore it risk slower output and declining relevance. Industry, age and experience offer no insulation. The divide will be between AI-native workers and everyone else.
While AI’s impact on the world of work might be intimidating, another way to prepare is by investing in the tech. Some of the strongest performers on the stock market right now — including Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — are investing heavily in AI, and some analysts predict that these stocks could see massive gains in the years to come (9).
But stocks aren’t the only way to tap into this hot market.
You’ve probably used at least one of the new AI tools by now. For many, their first thought after using AI might have been, “This is going to change the world.”
As an investor, your second thought was probably, “So how do I invest in this company?”
Because many of the most valuable AI companies are still private, the answer is simple: you can’t — unless you’re somehow invested in the right venture capital fund.
Venture capital is where the early bets on future giants are placed — before IPO headlines turn them into household names. But, for decades, venture capital has been one of the few remaining tables in finance where retail investors can’t get a seat.
Fundrise finally disrupted that dynamic a few years ago by launching a venture capital product with two goals. One: build a portfolio of the most valuable private tech companies in the world. Two: make it available to as many people as possible, with investments starting at just $10.
Today, Fundrise manages billions of dollars in private market assets and their venture capital product is designed specifically for investors like you who want to get in early on transformative technologies like AI.
Check out their venture portfolio today and start investing in minutes.
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see oureditorial ethics and guidelines.
Fox Business (1); Challenger, Gray & Christmas (2); Federal Reserve Bank of New York (3); CNBC (4); Axios (5); Goldman Sachs (6); Statcounter (7); Menlo Ventures (8); Morningstar (9)
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
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