In the rapidly advancing world of AI, lots of dialogue has arisen regarding the profound changes AI will bring to the job market. This imminent shift has sparked a range of reactions in Palo Alto High School, where students and teachers alike are weighing the effects AI will have on the future job market.

“Now, the real thing that AI can’t do is that it can’t be human. It can’t have this rationality that human beings have. It doesn’t have the same level of empathy and compassion. … I know that the industries that I’m interested in, specifically in the humanities, that’s something that cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence, just because it’s so much based in the human brain.”

­— KYLE GREENBERG, 10th grade

“Honestly, I don’t really agree with, like, the idea of, like, AI taking over jobs … It’s not something that is ruining job opportunities for people. … I think, like, it could be kind of like a pinch for people who are maybe in like, CS or just people who are in that area who could be kind of faced by artificial intelligence.”

— EILEEN LEE,  10th grade

“I think that it’s wise for students to truly start piecing together their interests and their passions with how they’re going to find a way to survive, … I’m advising many of my students … to think about is picking up a skill that they think is difficult to replace”

— ROXANNE LANZOT, computer science teacher

“The use of AI has sort of desensitized the hard effort and work, which has made a lot of people lazy, and I think attention span to hard labor has also gone down. Especially with the weakening job market, AI has taken over a lot of jobs, and I think that it’s overall been a very bad impact on society.”

— TIRIAN MELEAN, 12th grade