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When I make presentations about AI, I am most often asked, “What can I do now to ensure that AI doesn’t take my job?”

And, that’s a challenge to answer. We do not know just how, and how quickly, AI will roll out. However, a Gallup Poll released last week showed nearly one-quarter of American workers use AI at least a few times each week. We know that Agentic AI is different from Generative AI. Generative AI is the transactional, commonly chatbot mounted, question and answer form that we saw first in ChatGPT by OpenAI a couple of years ago. That remains a powerful tool. Agentic AI enables AI to reason, research, plan, control other digital tools, conduct actions on your behalf and complete multiple smart steps. It is capable of taking on a role delivering outcomes. That’s much like what a person is hired to do. In our jobs, we often are expected not to merely respond to individual questions, but to accomplish outcomes and results, and then, when possible, to revise our methods to do the job better.

On January 23, I posed the concern over being replaced by AI to Gemini 3 Pro in order to get AI’s perspective on the topic. Citing a podcast from There’s An AI For That (January 21, 2026), Gemini suggested that “The narrator argues that the biggest mistake people make is trying to stay relevant by becoming faster at completing tasks or learning more of the tools of that trade.” Gemini went on to respond “that true security in the AI era comes from shifting your focus from ‘output value’ (the things you make) to ‘outcome value’ (the results you deliver and the responsibility you take). To remain irreplaceable by 2026, the video identifies three critical human advantages: choosing the right problems to solve, making decisions under uncertainty, and owning accountability. Instead of being a ‘task machine,’ you should aim to be an ‘operator’ who uses AI as leverage to manage systems and drive real-world business goals like revenue and growth.”

In most cases, the decision for implementing AI solutions to complete tasks that previously have been done by humans, simply comes down to operating costs on the bottom line. AI applications work 24 hours a day, don’t require insurance benefits, take no vacation or sick leave time and are able to concurrently do a variety of unrelated tasks. Those characteristics make it more likely that over time AI will cost less to operate than paying the indirect costs of human labor. Ultimately, value in the workplace will shift away from technical execution and instead toward judgment, taste, and the ability to turn AI-generated outputs into useful outcomes. Humans remain in the loop as what some sources call an operator position and others call an orchestrator position. This emerging human position is responsible for overseeing agentic AI tools, ensuring accuracy, timeliness and effectiveness.

The U.S. Career Institute in May 2023 identified 65 career tracks that appear to be less susceptible to embodied AI disruption, that is replacement by AI robots based on the abilities, knowledge, skills, and activities that are required to perform the job well. Nurse Practitioners, Choreographers, and Physician Assistants top the list with anticipated human employee growth rates of more than 25% by 2032. Teachers, Instructors and School Administrators were also high on the list. In general, the Institute suggested that social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal relationships would take longer to reliably perfect in an AI environment than many others with an emphasis on quantitative skills such as Accounting where the transition is already underway.

For those in the job market, it will be best to regularly monitor such lists as the one from the U.S. Career Institute of job categories showing increases and those fields in which employment appears to be decreasing due to the lower costs of AI. Continuing and professional education may become more important than ever before. As AI accelerates the advancement of work outcomes, the question arises what can we in higher education do to ensure our learners remain relevant and valuable in the workforce.

I again turned to Gemini 3 Pro for insight into how we can provide learning that is relevant and will help keep workers/learners prepared for what is coming next. Gemini 3 recommends for students entering college now, “the goal is to choose fields where human judgment, empathy, and physical intervention are the primary value-adds.” Those are represented best by labor projections such as the U.S. Career Institute mentioned above and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

However, for those who are already committed to a field, Gemini raised the possibility of colleges and universities offering dual tracks. “We are entering an era of ‘Domain + AI.’ A degree in ‘just’ Business or ‘just’ Communications is becoming riskier; the most resilient students will be those who combine a traditional discipline with AI Orchestration skills.” Operationalizing this concept may be best done by adding certificate programs in the key AI orchestration, or operator, skills that can be paired with discipline-based degree or other certificate programs.

Gemini 3 then turned to a podcast by an avatar of Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA, who shared advice on staying relevant in the AI era. “Individuals must shift their focus from mastering specific tools to developing high-level human judgment and domain depth. Because AI commoditizes technical skills and general knowledge, the value shifts to those who can navigate the “what” and the “why” rather than just the “how.” Jensen Huang has suggested a four-layer strategy for staying indispensable: achieving deep domain mastery where your judgment becomes rare, grounding yourself in “evergreen” fundamentals like systems thinking and physics, mastering the art of asking high-quality questions, and maintaining the emotional resilience to pivot quickly when outdated practices fail. Ultimately, the goal is to become a “learning system” rather than just a holder of a specific job title.

How is your university preparing to provide learning opportunities that meet the expectations of the AI era? Are your leaders conversant with the role of AI Orchestration and the four-layer strategy outlined above? Can you contribute to developing a plan for enabling your degree and certificate completers to develop the skills, abilities and inspiration to remain relevant in the coming AI workforce?

This column was originally published in Inside Higher Ed.