While white-collar layoffs spark widespread anxiety, today's students are taking a markedly different approach to artificial intelligence. From MBA classrooms to high school hallways, young people are embracing AI as a career accelerator rather than a job destroyer, signaling a generational shift in how we think about human-machine collaboration in the workplace.
The job market anxiety gripping experienced professionals hasn't reached America's classrooms. Students from high school to graduate school are diving headfirst into AI integration, viewing the technology as an opportunity rather than a threat to their future careers.
OpenAI's ChatGPT has become the unofficial teaching assistant for millions of students, but not in the way educators initially feared. Rather than replacing critical thinking, young people are developing sophisticated strategies for human-AI collaboration that could reshape how we approach work entirely.
At New York University Stern School of Business, Professor Robert Seamans runs what he calls "black sheep" experiments with his MBA students. The approach is surprisingly confrontational - students write papers on workplace topics like return-to-office mandates, then ask AI to tear their arguments apart with adversarial feedback.
"I'm trying to get them to understand that they can interact with AI in a variety of ways," Seamans told executives at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit last week. The results surprised him - students preferred the adversarial approach because it better mimicked real workplace dynamics.
This isn't just graduate-level experimentation. High school senior Aarnav Sathish, 17, uses ChatGPT for what he calls "assignment busywork" while being careful to maintain it "as a tool and not a crutch." His teachers officially discourage AI use, creating an interesting tension between institutional policy and student pragmatism.
At Columbia University, 19-year-old Ezinne Okonkwo has developed her own AI ethics framework. She'll use it for repetitive email writing but draws the line at coding assistance unless she already understands the programming language. "I won't use it for coding if I don't already know how to do it," she explained.
The most fascinating dynamics are playing out at Georgia Tech, where siblings Carson and Andrew Boyer are experiencing completely different AI policies despite attending the same institution. Carson, a 19-year-old freshman studying engineering, uses ChatGPT as a Mandarin conversation partner - "like having a Chinese tutor," he says.
