{"id":427105,"date":"2026-02-15T14:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/427105\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T14:00:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:00:21","slug":"ex-google-exec-says-degrees-in-law-and-medicine-are-a-waste-of-time-because-ai-will-catch-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/427105\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex\u2013Google exec says degrees in law and medicine are a waste of time because AI will catch up"},"content":{"rendered":"

As undergraduate degrees have lost their payoff thanks to AI<\/a>, young people have turned to advanced schooling to unlock jobs with salaries exceeding $200,000<\/a> (or in some cases, a $100 million signing bonus<\/a>). However, one former Google leader says Gen Z should not be so fast to jump on the PhD train, as even doctoral degrees may have lost their edge.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI itself is going to be gone by the time you finish a PhD. Even things like applying AI to robotics will be solved by then,\u201d Jad Tarifi, the founder of Google\u2019s first generative-AI team, told Business Insider<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tarifi himself graduated with a PhD in AI in 2012, when the subject was far less mainstream. But today, the millennial says, time would be better spent studying a more niche topic intertwined with AI, like AI for biology\u2014or maybe not a degree at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigher education as we know it is on the verge of becoming obsolete,\u201d Tarifi told Fortune. \u201cThriving in the future will come not from collecting credentials but from cultivating unique perspectives, agency, emotional awareness, and strong human bonds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI encourage young people to focus on two things: the art of connecting deeply with others, and the inner work of connecting with themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tech\u2019s warning for education in the changing AI tide<\/p>\n

Even studying to become a medical doctor<\/a> or lawyer<\/a> may not be worth ambitious Gen Z\u2019s time anymore. Those degrees take so long to complete in comparison with how quickly AI is evolving that they may result in students just \u201cthrowing away\u201d years of their lives, Tarifi added to Business Insider.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the current medical system, what you learn in medical school is so outdated and based on memorization,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tarifi is not alone in his feeling that higher education is not keeping up with the shifting AI tides. In fact, many tech leaders have recently expressed concerns that the rising cost of school paired with an outdated curriculum is creating a perfect storm for an unprepared workforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure that college is preparing people for the jobs that they need to have today,\u201d said Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> on Theo Von\u2019s This Past Weekend podcast<\/a>. \u201cI think that there\u2019s a big issue on that, and all the student debt issues are \u2026\u00a0really big.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sort of been this taboo thing to say, \u2018Maybe not everyone needs to go to college,\u2019 and because there\u2019s a lot of jobs that don\u2019t require that \u2026 people are probably coming around to that opinion a little more now than maybe like 10 years ago,\u201d Zuckerberg added.<\/p>\n

Moreover, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said<\/a> his company\u2019s AI models can already perform in ways equivalent to those with a PhD.<\/p>\n

\u201cGPT-5 really feels like talking to a PhD-level expert in any topic,\u201d Altman said. \u201cSomething like GPT-5 would be pretty much unimaginable in any other time in history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pipeline from PhD to six-figure job offer remains strong\u2014for now<\/p>\n

For existing AI-focused PhD students, the private sector job pipeline remains strong. In fact, in 2023, some 70% of all AI doctoral students took private sector jobs postgrad, a jump from just 20% two decades ago, according to MIT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, this increase has some academic leaders worried about a \u201cbrain drain\u201d<\/a> that could result from too many experts electing to work at tech companies\u2014versus staying in academia and teaching the next generation as professors.<\/p>\n

Henry Hoffmann, chair of the University of Chicago\u2019s department of computer science, told Fortune<\/a> he\u2019s seen his PhD students get courted for decades\u2014but the salary lures have only grown. One student with zero professional experience recently dropped out to accept a \u201chigh six-figure\u201d offer from ByteDance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen students can get the kind of job they want [as students], there\u2019s no reason to force them to keep going,\u201d Hoffmann said.<\/p>\n

A version of this story originally published on\u00a0Fortune.com<\/a>\u00a0on Aug. 18, 2025.<\/p>\n

More on careers:<\/p>\n

$15 billion tech CEO says she doesn\u2019t know what jobs<\/a> will look like in 2 years\u2014but she\u2019s still pushing her son into computer science<\/p>\n

\u2018Don\u2019t look at the r\u00e9sum\u00e9\u2019: Elon Musk admits<\/a> he\u2019s \u2018fallen prey\u2019 to flashy credentials but says conversation matters most when hiring<\/p>\n

LinkedIn knows<\/a> your CV and degree are becoming irrelevant. It has a plan for that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As undergraduate degrees have lost their payoff thanks to AI, young people have turned to advanced schooling to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,5625,4792,8653,1398,136472,4998,844,1940,1371,3547,86,16952,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-427105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-career-advice","12":"tag-careers","13":"tag-colleges-and-universities","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-evergreen-refresh","16":"tag-gen-z","17":"tag-google","18":"tag-google-ai","19":"tag-jobs","20":"tag-school","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-the-future-of-work","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}