What’s causing anxiety in America right now? No, it’s not Iran, Trump or Gavin Newsom’s hair. It’s what Andrew Yang calls “The Fuckening”. As a mother of two daughters choosing their courses right now, I’m standing in the middle of it – holding a course catalogue, trying to figure out what my teenage daughters should study in an age of AI.
Anthropic’s latest research says the most AI-exposed jobs are programmers, analysts and customer service reps. The safest? Bartenders and dishwashers. For the first time in modern history, the safest place is not at a desk.
So what do you tell your kids to study? In this episode of Searching for America, I take an AI course at Georgia Tech, revisit Aristotle, remember my father’s hands – and land on an answer that surprised me: in a world of infinite answers, taste and judgment become the scarce resources. We’re not educating our kids for subjects anymore. We’re educating them for judgment.
Robyn Curnow’s podcast, “Searching for America”, examines the US from her outsider perspective – as a South African living in the American South.
You can also watch the podcast on YouTube and sign up for her free weekly newsletter or Substack here.
Top image: Rawpixel/Currency collage.
ALSO LISTEN:
PODCAST: Why is half of America scared of AI?
PODCAST: Iran and the strategy of denial
PODCAST: In odds we trust
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