Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist and the founder of LinkedIn, says young people should use their familiarity with AI as a selling point to potential employers.
“You are generation AI. You are AI native. So bringing the fact that you have AI in your tool set is one of the things that makes you enormously attractive,” Hoffman said in a video he published on his YouTube channel on Thursday.
Hoffman was addressing questions sent in by college students on how they should best navigate the job hunt. Several students had asked Hoffman about AI’s impact on their employment prospects.
Hoffman said in his video that AI’s impact on jobs is a “legitimate worry,” but he added that students could try to use it to their advantage.
“Look, on this side, it’s transforming the workspace, entry-level work, employers’ confusion. But on this side, it’s making you able to show your unique capabilities. That, you know, in an environment with a bunch of older people, you might be able to help them out,” he said.
A representative for Hoffman did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The rise of AI has sparked fears that companies could end up hiring fewer staff in the years to come. Last month, the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, said in an interview with Axios that AI may wipe out half of all entry-level office jobs.
In the interview, Amodei said he expects unemployment to rise by 10% to 20% over the next one to five years.
“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” he said. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”
But not all business leaders agree with Amodei’s dire prediction.
Jensen Huang, the CEO of chip giant Nvidia, told reporters on the sidelines of VivaTech 2025 in Paris this week that Amodei was wrong.
“I pretty much disagree with almost everything he says,” Huang said of Amodei. “He thinks AI is so scary, but only they should do it.”
Huang said that while some jobs would disappear, AI could also create new job opportunities.
“Do I think AI will change jobs? It will change everyone’s — it’s changed mine,” Huang said.
Mark Cuban had a similar response to Amodei’s comments as Huang. The “Shark Tank” star wrote in a BlueSky post last month that AI will create, and not destroy, jobs.
“Someone needs to remind the CEO that at one point there were more than 2m secretaries. There were also separate employees to do in office dictation. They were the original white collar displacements,” Cuban wrote.
“New companies with new jobs will come from AI and increase TOTAL employment,” he added.
