Jad Tarifi, the man who founded Google's first generative AI team, doesn't think now is the time to pursue long academic paths like law or medicine.
AI Disruption Makes Long Degrees Risky?
In a recent interview with Business Insider, Tarifi warned that by the time someone finishes a Ph.D., the AI landscape will have completely changed. “AI itself is going to be gone by the time you finish a Ph.D.,” he said. “Even things like applying AI to robotics will be solved by then.”
Tarifi, who joined Google in 2012 and spent nearly a decade with the company before founding his own startup, Integral AI, said people should only pursue a Ph.D. if they're obsessed with the subject. Otherwise, he said, it's a painful and unnecessary sacrifice.
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“[You give up] five years of your life and a lot of pain. I don’t think anyone should ever do a Ph.D. unless they are obsessed with the field,” he said.
Instead, Tarifi urged people to skip academia and engage more with the world around them. “If you are unsure, you should definitely default to ‘no,’ and focus on just living in the world,” he said. “You will move much faster. You’ll learn a lot more. You’ll be more adaptive to how things are changed.”
And his skepticism isn’t just limited to Ph.D. programs. Degrees that take years to complete, like law and medicine, are also in trouble, he said. “In the current medical system, what you learn in medical school is so outdated and based on memorization,” Tarifi explained to Business Insider. “You could be throwing away eight years of your life.”
He's not alone in raising these concerns.
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Former chief business officer at Google X Mo Gawdat recently called the idea that AI will replace dull work with new job creation “100% crap.” On the “Diary of a CEO” podcast, Gawdat warned that even high-level roles, including CEOs, are at risk once artificial general intelligence becomes mainstream. “AGI is going to be better at everything than humans, including being a CEO,” he said.
Nvidia NVDA CEO Jensen Huang echoed a similar sentiment, although with more optimism. On the “All In Podcast,” he said AI would eliminate mundane tasks and make people more productive. But he also warned: “If you’re not using AI, you’re going to lose your job to somebody who uses AI. There's not a software programmer in the future who's gonna be able to hold their own. You can’t raw dog it anymore.”
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Tarifi, for his part, believes soft skills will become increasingly important. “The best thing to work on is more internal. Meditate. Socialize with your friends. Get to know yourself emotionally,” he said. Prompting and using AI well, in his view, requires “emotional attunement” and “good taste”—not just technical skills.
And you don't need to know every technical detail to be useful in this new world. “I have a Ph.D. in AI, but I don’t know how the latest microprocessor works,” Tarifi told Business Insider. “For example, you can drive a car, but you might not know every single thing about the car. But if you know what to do if something goes wrong, that’s good enough.”
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