Is Kant the new code? If AI can write, code, and even plan, which human skills suddenly become scarce—and valuable?
In this conversation with Robert Capps (former Editorial Director of Wired, contributor to The New York Times Magazine), we dive into his widely shared NYT Mag feature, “AI Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You.” We unpack the three big buckets of new work he sees emerging—Trust, Integrators, and Taste—and explore why philosophy majors, auditors, and “AI translators” may be the surprise winners. We also get frank about hallucinations, over-extrapolation, inequality, lethal autonomous weapons, and why Rob still comes out more optimistic.
In this episode of AI-Curious, we:
- Break down Rob’s three buckets of future AI jobs: Trust (auditors, ethicists, legal guarantors), Integrators (the translators who know both your business and the models), and Taste (the Rick Rubin-esque role of vision, judgment, and curation).
- Talk about why Ethan Mollick refuses to let AI write his first drafts—and why that matters for your own thinking.
- Examine how “the tools will be commodities, not the people,” and what that means for founders, creators, journalists, and scrappy upstarts.
- Get into the very real risk of inequality and policy paralysis—and why UBI isn’t a satisfying answer.
- Preview Rob’s documentary on AI weapons and the fight to keep humans in the loop.
Takeaways
- Trust work explodes. Expect a cottage industry of auditors, ethicists, and “legal guarantors” to ensure AI output is accurate, defensible, and compliant.
- Integrators win inside companies. The most valuable people will be those who can translate between business reality and fast-moving model ecosystems.
- Taste is leverage. Vision, taste, and editorial judgment—knowing what good looks like—become the human moat.
- Beware first-draft capture. Letting AI write your first draft can quietly dominate your thinking (Mollick’s rule is worth adopting).
- Inequality is the real threat. Most experts Rob spoke with fear a rapid widening of inequality more than mass permanent joblessness.
- Tools, not people, become commodities. When everyone has Goldman-tier tools, expect disruption from the bottom, not reinforcement of the top.
Rob’s NYT Magazine piece: “AI Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/magazine/ai-new-jobs.html
