Tommy Kruecker-Green || EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Most of the work done by computer programmers, financial analysts, and office administrators could be performed by artificial intelligence (AI). That is, in theory. This March, Anthropic, the AI company behind the chatbot Claude, published research finding that AI is theoretically capable of handling 94 percent of tasks done by computer and math workers, with similarly high theoretical capability in business and finance, management, legal and office administration roles. Actual workplace adaptation is much lower; the company’s own measure of how Claude is being used puts coverage in computer and math jobs at about 33 percent.

Even as current data doesn’t suggest a full-blown AI takeover, the theoretical is starting to feel imminent for a new generation of students choosing college majors and careers.

At Andover High School, guidance counselor Jayne Jones said that AI has begun to reshape her conversations with students and their futures. “Even though AI was around last year, I think it’s really exploded more this year for having direct impact with staff, with students, and other administrators,” she said. In conversations with her students, it has become something of a recurring half-joke. “Like, if that job exists, ha ha ha,” Jones said. A student she met with recently who is interested in studying computer science told her he wasn’t sure how AI would affect his major or what internships might be available to him.

In the same March study, Anthropic researchers described a possible “Great Recession for white-collar workers” scenario in which unemployment in the most AI-exposed jobs could double from about 3 percent to 6 percent. They were careful to say this hasn’t happened. But they also cited other research showing a 6 percent to 16 percent drop in employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in jobs most exposed to AI, mostly attributable, the researchers said, to slow hiring rather than layoffs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.

Senior Ben Falk has been worried about these forecasts. “I’m really concerned about AI and just the fact that jobs today might not exist in the future,” he said. “And as someone hoping to study potentially computer science and engineering, it’s very concerning.” 

Senior Roshni Puvanaraj is weighing those forecasts against the cost of college. She said she’s weighing biochemistry and law, and at one point considered philosophy. What she won’t do, she said, is shell out tens of thousands of dollars on a degree she thinks AI will eventually make useless. “I don’t want to go into a major that will basically get taken over by AI and then my own degree is pointless,” she said. “Why would I want to spend like $400K on a worthless degree?”

Puvanaraj’s concerns about returns on investments are hardly surprising considering the financial burden of higher education, a sentiment that is often echoed by others in her generation. According to a 2025 Fortune magazine article, the average price of a bachelor’s degree has roughly doubled in the last two decades to over $38,000 per year, and total U.S. student loan debt has reached nearly $2 trillion. A 2025 survey by Zety, a professional career site, found that 65 percent of Gen Z workers don’t believe a college degree will protect them from AI-related job loss, and 43 percent have already changed or adjusted their career plans because of AI.

Among Puvanaraj’s classmates, opinions on which fields are most at risk vary. Senior Megan Huang plans to study pre-law and isn’t especially rattled by the prospect of AI replacing her future career. “Lawyers need compassion, and AI doesn’t really have any emotion,” she said. “I don’t think it could do as good of a job.”

Huang said her brother—a math and computer science major—has told her he isn’t too worried about his own field either, mainly because AI still makes mistakes it doesn’t catch on its own. “Humans can check their work,” she said. “AI doesn’t check its work unless you tell it it’s wrong.” Still, her brother’s confidence isn’t widely shared among her peers. Unlike her pre-law track, most of her friends are STEM students, she said, and for them AI is “a bigger problem…especially for computer [science].”

The jobs that face the most risk follow fairly consistent patterns across data. Jones’s husband is a chief financial officer for the systems division of a bank, and she said he expects AI to replace certain low-level roles in his industry as the technology matures. The Anthropic study found that computer programmers, computer service representatives, and data entry workers were the occupations most exposed to AI. Jobs that need physical presence, like cooks, mechanics, and lifeguards, showed almost no exposure.

Jones said she doesn’t think AI will replace nurses, surgeons, teachers, or counselors. She also said many of her students are looking at trades. According to the Zety survey, 53 percent of Gen Z workers are now seriously considering blue-collar or skilled trade work.

Whatever path students choose, Huang said that high school doesn’t prepare students for the workforce because it focuses too narrowly on grades. “We don’t have grades in the workforce,” she said. School, she argued, should emphasize learning over scores, since workplaces demand the ability to adapt and improve quickly.

Jones has lived through technology panics before. When the internet first became widely available, she said, people worried it would ruin everything, but they adapted anyway. She drew the same parallel to AI. “Pandora’s box is open,” she said. “You can’t get it back. But then we have to learn how to supplement and use it concurrently with what we’re doing and the purpose of why we’re here.”