Companies, workers and policymakers race to future-proof careers in the age of AI

As artificial intelligence moves from experiment to everyday business tool, companies are restructuring white-collar work, workers are racing to reskill and policymakers are debating how to cushion the impact.

Recent commentary from management thinker Adam Grant, new data from LinkedIn and fresh forecasts from global institutions such as the World Economic Forum and the International Monetary Fund point to a shift away from traditional job security toward what many executives now describe as “skill security.”

Corporate AI push reshapes white-collar work

Across sectors, large employers are accelerating AI projects while closely scrutinizing headcount. According to Reuters, a recent survey by KPMG found that U.S. executives plan to lift average AI investment to about $130 million over the next year, and 78% say boards are pressing them to prove that automation is cutting costs and boosting profits.

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In the United Kingdom, new research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development reported that roughly one in six employers expects to reduce staff in the next year as AI tools are rolled out, with clerical and junior professional roles viewed as most exposed. The survey, reported by The Times, highlighted that large private-sector firms are more likely than smaller peers to anticipate AI-related cuts.

Some technology leaders are issuing sharper warnings. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei told Business Insider that rapid advances in large language models could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar roles within five years, particularly in law, finance, consulting and technology. Amodei argued that early-career hiring data already show employers favoring experienced workers who can pair domain expertise with AI tools.

Other employers strike a more measured tone. Staffing group Adecco told Reuters this month that it has not yet seen broad labor-market dislocation from AI, even as the company itself posts revenue growth and reports that many clients are experimenting with automation. Adecco expects sales to rise around 3% in the fourth quarter, suggesting that hiring demand remains resilient in several regions despite concerns about technology and interest rates.

Global surveys indicate that the impact will be uneven but wide-ranging. The World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs Report 2025” finds that 86% of businesses expect AI and information-processing technologies to transform their operations by 2030, with technology trends projected to create about 170 million new roles while displacing roughly 92 million existing jobs over the decade.

Data show skills, not job titles, are being rewritten

For individual professionals, the more immediate change is in what their jobs require day to day. In a recent edition of “The Work Shift” newsletter for LinkedIn News, editor Taylor Borden reported that 85% of U.S. professionals could see at least a quarter of their current skills reshaped by AI, based on LinkedIn’s internal data. Fields such as media, marketing, engineering, human resources and design are already seeing core tasks supported by tools that can draft copy, analyze datasets and generate code.

LinkedIn’s data also suggest that careers are becoming more fluid. Professionals entering the workforce today are on track to hold roughly twice as many jobs over their careers as those who started 15 years ago, reflecting faster shifts in job content and employer demand. Survey results cited by LinkedIn show that 41% of professionals worldwide feel overwhelmed by the pace at which they are expected to understand AI, yet 54% of American workers remain optimistic that the technology will streamline their work rather than replace it.

That sense of urgency is visible in how workers are updating their profiles. More than 20 million LinkedIn members have added a certification this year, a 17% increase from a year earlier, while the number of distinct skills listed on profiles has risen 140% since 2018. LinkedIn says members now have skill sets that are about 40% broader than they were seven years ago, and identifies “AI literacy” as the fastest-growing skill on the platform, with 100% year-over-year growth.

Global institutions see similar trends at the macro level. The IMF estimates that around 60% of jobs in advanced economies are exposed to AI in some form, with roughly half of those roles likely to benefit from productivity gains and the other half facing heightened risk of displacement or wage pressure if tasks are fully automated. The Fund argues that digital infrastructure, education systems and labor-market policies will be central in determining whether workers can shift into new, higher-value activities.

Adam Grant urges leaders to “think like scientists”

Against this backdrop, management experts are advising leaders to rethink how they make decisions in an AI-enabled workplace. Speaking at WOBI’s World Business Forum in New York on November 5, Wharton professor and bestselling author Adam Grant told executives that “thinking like a scientist” is one of the most effective ways to future-proof both careers and companies, according to CNBC.

Grant defined that mindset as treating every opinion at work as “a hypothesis waiting to be tested” rather than a fixed truth. He contrasted it with what he calls “preacher,” “prosecutor” and “politician” modes of thinking, in which leaders either defend their own views, attack others’ positions or only listen when their audience already agrees. By not tying their identity to specific ideas, leaders who think like scientists are more willing to run experiments, admit when they are wrong and change course.

According to Grant, such leaders tend to build learning cultures where employees feel safe proposing pilots and testing AI tools in limited contexts before scaling them. “Good scientists are as motivated to look for reasons why they might be wrong as opposed to just looking for reasons why they must be right,” he told the audience, adding that humility about what one does not know can encourage teams to keep updating their skills as technology evolves.

The World Business Forum itself reflects the level of executive attention on these questions. Operated by WOBI and launched in New York in 2004, the annual conference brings together thousands of senior leaders from more than 60 countries to discuss shifts in the global economy, with past speakers ranging from former U.S. President Bill Clinton to CEOs such as Richard Branson and Jack Welch. The 2024 New York edition took place at the Javits Center, with AI and the future of work again high on the agenda.

Workers pivot and use AI as a career co-pilot

While executives debate strategy, many professionals are already making concrete career moves. LinkedIn’s analysis of millions of anonymized profiles shows that in the United States, 14 out of 26 job functions saw more workers entering than exiting over the past year, signaling that workers are reorienting toward areas with stronger demand. Popular destinations include entrepreneurship, finance, real estate, accounting and healthcare services, many of which combine relatively stable demand with growing use of AI tools.

Some entrepreneurs see AI as an on-demand advisory team. Investor Mark Cuban told LinkedIn News that he encourages founders to treat AI systems as a kind of virtual boardroom, asking them to draft business plans, model cash-flow projections or simulate competitive threats to stress-test a strategy. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman went further in a past interview, predicting that the combination of automation and global capital markets could soon make a one-person billion-dollar company possible.

Individual stories illustrate why some professionals are reinventing their paths. LinkedIn profiled immigration attorney Mohammad Shair, who founded his own firm in Tampa, Florida, to gain more control over his schedule as he started a family. He described self-employment as the best career decision he has made, citing the ability to manage his time and client base directly. LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey found that 65% of self-employed Americans feel in charge of their careers, compared with 45% of workers overall.

Career pivots are not limited to entrepreneurship. Former lawyer Alex Su, who left legal practice in 2016, transitioned into sales, then a legal-tech startup leadership role. He told LinkedIn that the most successful career changers are those who think deliberately about the kind of work they want to do and the conditions under which they want to do it, including location, hours and flexibility. For many, transferable skills such as research, communication and stakeholder management are proving valuable in adjacent sectors such as education, operations and real estate.

Outlook: from job security to “learning security”

Looking ahead, forecasts suggest that the scale of AI-driven change will depend heavily on how organizations invest in people. McKinsey research on generative AI estimates that the technology could add between 0.1 and 0.6 percentage points to annual labor-productivity growth through 2040, provided companies pair automation with reskilling and redeploy workers into higher-value tasks. Without those investments, the consultancy warns, productivity gains may remain localized in a few firms and industries.

Policymakers are also trying to assess the balance of risk and opportunity. IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva has argued that AI could transform up to 60% of jobs in advanced economies and around 40% globally, with women and college-educated workers generally more exposed but also better positioned to benefit if transition policies are robust. The IMF has created an “AI Preparedness Index” to benchmark countries on digital infrastructure, education and regulatory frameworks.

At the same time, business leaders caution against assuming that job losses are inevitable or uniform. Adecco’s latest earnings suggested continued hiring demand, while the World Economic Forum notes that technology trends are likely to create slightly more roles than they eliminate by 2030, even as they significantly change the tasks involved. McKinsey’s global AI survey finds that many companies still struggle to move from pilots to scaled deployments, which may give workers and educators some time to adapt.

For individual workers, experts increasingly emphasize adaptability over prediction. DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis recently told LinkedIn that “learning how to learn” may be the single most important career skill in an environment where AI capabilities evolve “week by week.” In practice, that means experimenting with AI tools, broadening both technical and human skills and, as Adam Grant suggests, treating career decisions as ongoing experiments rather than one-time bets.

As AI diffuses through the economy, the emerging consensus from executives, economists and career strategists is that no job will remain entirely unchanged, but many could become more productive and engaging if organizations pair automation with thoughtful human-capital strategies. For now, the workers best positioned to benefit appear to be those who keep expanding their skills, build trusted networks and remain willing to rethink their assumptions about what their careers can look like.