Seeing AGI (2) – What Should I Do Now?
When I published "Seeing AGI" a few weeks ago, I honestly thought it would stay within the small circle of friends who follow my work. Instead, the piece traveled far beyond my expectations. Hundreds of people wrote to me, sharing a mix of excitement and concern about how AI is reshaping their jobs.
Every message ended with the same question: "What should I do now?"
This second essay attempts to answer that question—imperfectly, candidly, and with the same urgency that led me to write the first. I do not pretend to have a universal blueprint; instead, let me share my thoughts on what I might do if I found myself in three different situations: as a student, as a working professional, or recently unemployed. Take what resonates with you, and simply discard the rest.
The future has already arrived, just unevenly distributed. Some people are facing the future head-on; others are still waiting on the sidelines. The sooner you move, the further ahead you'll be.
If I Am a University Student:
Graduating in the coming years will be like stepping directly onto a highway with no on-ramp. To overcome this, your ramp-up must happen while you're still in college. The real edge for fresh graduates is not years of work experience, but open-mindedness and the ability to learn quickly.
You have to know that AI has reset the starting line for everyone, including your future employers and interviewers.
Master AI beyond your interviewer's expectations:
If you know more about AI—either broader or deeper—than your interviewer, you'll far exceed their expectations. Employers will overlook your lack of experience and think: "This person understands AI better than I do. Perfect—they can hit the ground running and start adding value from day one."
How to start? Learn AI by building bold, AI-powered side projects.
- Let's say you study film, think of yourself as a one-person, world-class studio. Use AI agents to storyboard, cast, and stitch together a one-minute short film you could have never made before.
- If you're in computer science, imagine yourself as the CTO of a startup. Ask AI to help you design and build an end-to-end app that recreates the core features of your favorite social platform.
- If you study finance, role-play as a regional CFO. Feed an LLM three years of 10-K filings and have it come up with acquisition ideas, flag risks, and analyze cash flows.
The point isn't perfection. The point is to start building, start learning, start moving—because that's your on-ramp to the AI highway.
If I Am a Working Professional:
Your new bargaining power in any organization now directly depends on how effectively you use AI to amplify your results.
Become the colleague who is using tomorrow's tools... today.
- Invest in yourself: skip one fancy dinner a month and put that money into premium AI subscriptions.
- Go deep: actively explore tools such as OpenAI DeepResearch, Genspark AI Slides and AI Sheets, or Perplexity Finance. Immerse yourself, experiment, and you'll feel the difference.
Share, teach, and lead.
The paradox of job security in the AGI era is that the more you help your peers learn, the more indispensable you become. Management will quickly see you as someone at the AI frontier. In this era of uneven opportunity, your goal is not just to protect your current job, but to use AI to unlock even greater opportunities and offers.
If I Am Recently Unemployed:
Reconnect with the projects you once shelved "because life got busy."
Now is the time to do what you've always wanted to do, but never had the opportunity. Only genuine interest will give us the motivation to grow and improve. Many of us have set aside childhood dreams—becoming a director, a designer, changing the world. But with AI, those dreams are now closer.
Let me share our own small company's experience. We have 24 people, and in the past 10 weeks, we shipped 8 major products: AI Browser, AI Slides, AI Sheets, and more. One engineer built an AI browser in three months; a PM created AI Slides in two weeks; and a designer—who had never coded before—built a browser download site in just three days. Our experience proves that AI is much more powerful than we imagine. You don't need a deep technical foundation—with creativity and a willingness to learn, you can accomplish things you never thought possible.
Unemployment isn't the end—it's a chance to restart. Use this opportunity to pursue what you always wanted to do but doubted you could. Embrace AI, spend time with these tools, and you might just find a much better job than before. Unemployment can be a reset, and AI is the tool for that reset—opening the door to better opportunities.
Final Thoughts
What I've shared here may be incomplete or one-sided. Ignore what doesn't resonate with you—this is not meant to be expert commentary. Absorb whatever is useful to you and let the rest go.
A former mentor once told me, after I asked how he remembered all the books he read, "Most books you'll forget. But if you remember even one or two sentences that help you, it's worth it." I used to read 3-4 books a month before AI; now, I barely have time. But I still take this attitude: if you get even one helpful insight, it's worth the read.
I hope this article offers you that one thing.