ISB AI Founders

The future: AI, careers, and you

Why I wanted this hour

I want to use this hour on something specific, not a pep talk: the difference between a certificate that ends up in a drawer and a portfolio that gets you into rooms. Breathe. You already did the hard part.

Act 1 · The future of AI

Not hype, not doom. Just what I’ve watched happen over the last few years, and what I’d bet on for the next five.

The next few years

I say this in every room I talk to: models keep getting smarter and cheaper, every year, on a curve that has held for years now. This is the floor, not the ceiling.

Agents, everywhere

A doctor’s agent reads the scan first. A lawyer’s agent drafts the first version of the contract. An engineer’s agent writes the first version of the code, the way Claude Code did for your product. Your classroom gets one too: a math tutor that shows its work, a writing partner that drafts and critiques, not instead of your teachers, next to them.

Your first job, five years out

Word processors, spreadsheets, codebases, hospital charts: every tool you open on day one already has an assistant living inside it, the way Claude Code lived inside your terminal all week. It won’t be a separate class, it’ll just be how the tool works.

You first

The honest part

I could stand up here and pretend to know exactly when. I don’t, and anyone who tells you they do is usually selling something. What I do know: that uncertainty is exactly why builders win. You don’t need the forecast to be right, you need to already be moving when it arrives.

Hold onto this

That’s not a scary sentence, it’s a hopeful one. The tools under you get better whether or not you do anything. Your job is what you build with them.

Now, about your careers.

My honest advice on careers

I did the traditional thing: top grades, a name-brand internship, a two-year graduate program, a startup accelerator. Each rung looked great on paper. Here’s the pattern I’d actually bet on now.

The script, updated

The new literacy

The scarce skill is no longer writing code. It’s spotting a problem, directing AI to solve it, and getting real people to care. You just did that, at your age.

The barbell of AI-era careers

Routine, repeatable work with no judgment layered on top. That’s the part agents are already best at.

How you’d describe yourself

The proof

You own a live URL, a launch video, and a first-revenue story. Proof of work no essay can fake, for college or for anything else.

Let’s talk about your college essay.

If college feels far away

Build one small thing a month from now until then and you will arrive at those applications with a portfolio nobody can compete with. The older students are slightly jealous of you right now. They should be.

College applications, practically

Not the perfect vocabulary. Not another club presidency. Evidence they can verify themselves.

How admissions actually reads this

A live URL, a launch video, a first-revenue story: that’s evidence a reader can verify themselves, in a stack of thousands of essays that all say “passionate” and “hardworking.”

Two applications

Say it like this

That sentence works in an essay, an interview, a dinner with relatives. Make it yours: name the pivot when your first idea didn’t land, quote the exact thing a stranger said about your product, and say the number, the first yuan you earned. Specific beats impressive, every time.

The line in the sand

Use it to sharpen your thinking, not to replace it. A reader can tell the difference between your voice and a smoothed-over one, and so can you, if you’re honest. This is also, I promise, exactly what your parents want to hear right now.

Two ways to use AI on your essay

What actually matters, going forward.

What matters in the age of AI

Taste. Judgment. Relationships. Agency. This week you practiced all four, probably without naming them. Let’s name them.

What stays human: taste

On Day 1, a hundred sticky notes went on the wall. You didn’t pick the loudest one, you picked the one that made a real person’s day worse and decided to fix it. That choice was yours, not the AI’s.

What stays human: judgment

When strangers used your product and got confused, you had to decide which fix actually mattered and which was just noise. AI can suggest ten fixes. Only you can tell the important one from the vanity one.

What stays human: relationships

Every real insight this week came from a conversation: a parent, a neighbor, a stranger on the street who told you the truth about your idea. No model can have that conversation for you.

What stays human: agency

Nobody assigned you a company this week. You picked the problem, picked the team, picked the price. That’s the part AI can’t do for you: the decision to begin. You already made it once. Make it again next month.

The deeper one

The best tools in the world can’t tell you what you actually care about. That part is still entirely yours to figure out, and it’s worth more time than any of us give it. What did you notice this week that you actually wanted to fix, not just the assignment you were given?

So, what do I actually encourage you to do?

What I encourage you to do

None of these take more than an hour a month. That’s the whole point.

Five things, starting today

A real company, your exact stage

In 2008, Airbnb’s founders pitched 7 investors for $150,000. Five said no in writing. Two never replied. Brian Chesky posted the actual rejection emails himself, years later, so builders like you could see them. Keep that in mind next time your idea gets rejected once.

Go deeper · on the portal

6 · Before you go

Ideas fade fast once the adrenaline of demo day wears off. This card is how we make sure this doesn’t end at 4:30 today.

You first

There is no answer on this slide. That’s the point: you are going to write it. Let the room talk.

Checkpoint

A map of where AI is going. The portfolio-beats-résumé frame. A next project with your name on it. That’s not a certificate, that’s a start.

“Keep building.” Today you proved it.

In a few minutes

Deep breath. You have already done the hard part. Go get ready. I’ll see you on stage.