Every Job Now Requires AI Skills, Says Former Meta Executive
Clara Shih watched Meta's AI agents outperform some of her top employees across multiple tasks. That moment last fall changed how she sees the future of work.
"In that moment I knew that nothing would ever be the same," Shih told Fortune. "You feel radicalized in that moment when you see it working."
Shih spent 20 years in AI roles at Meta and Salesforce. She's now an adviser at Meta and founder of the New Work Foundation, a nonprofit with a consumer brand called Dear CC. The organization trains Gen Z for a workplace increasingly dominated by AI agents.
The Entry-Level Crunch
Gen Z faces a difficult job market. Entry-level positions have dried up while AI-related layoffs loom. A recent ZipRecruiter report shows many recent graduates are turning to entrepreneurship, gig work, and trade school instead of traditional corporate roles.
Shih saw this firsthand when friends and family members-some Ivy League graduates-described the impossibility of landing jobs. That's what motivated her to launch the New Work Foundation.
"I realized that the only way to help people keep up with the pace of AI was to give them AI tools," Shih said. "Because if you use the traditional ways…it's just not fast enough to keep pace with how quickly AI is advancing."
AI Adoption Correlates With Career Advancement
Workers who actively use AI in daily tasks are more likely to earn promotions or raises than those who avoid the technology, according to a recent survey from enterprise platform Writer.
Shih's message to job seekers is direct: "If you want to find a job and if you want to keep your job, you need to learn how to get really good at using AI agents."
The New Work Foundation launched two tools to help. Field Report shows job seekers the state of specific career paths, including open roles and automation risk. JobClaw, an AI agent, matches people to jobs based on their strengths and interests-no résumé required. Users fill out a five-question intake form about their goals and background.
Conflicting Predictions on Job Displacement
Business leaders disagree on AI's impact on employment. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes the technology will disrupt half of the white-collar workforce. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts AI will work alongside humans and enable more hiring.
Gen Z's confidence in AI has declined. A Gallup poll found that Gen Z's sentiment toward AI has grown significantly more negative compared to a year ago.
Shih welcomes this skepticism. "The people who have moral objections to AI, those are actually the people that I want involved, making sure that we steer these systems in the right direction," she said.
For HR professionals and educators, this shift creates urgent questions about workforce preparation. Understanding AI for Human Resources and AI Productivity Courses is becoming essential to guide job seekers and employees through this transition.
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