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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Jacob Clemente](https://time.com/author/jacob-clemente/) Senior Reporter, AI & Work Apr 24, 2026 12:00 AM UTC  by [Jacob Clemente](https://time.com/author/jacob-clemente/) Senior Reporter, AI & Work Apr 24, 2026 12:00 AM UTC Stanford economist [Erik Brynjolfsson](https://economics.stanford.edu/people/erik-brynjolfsson)—one of the most cited thinkers on AI’s impact on work—calls himself a “mindful optimist” about AI, arguing that its effects come down to the choices we make. We spoke with Brynjolfsson about what colleges need to teach students today, the continued importance of domain expertise, and the trap many executives are falling into when it comes to deploying the technology. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for length and clarity: **What industries or roles might you caution someone against going into right now?** AI cuts across almost every industry and it cuts across almost every occupation. The way I think about it is that almost every project can be divided into three stages: There's defining the question, executing it once it's well-defined, and evaluating \[whether\] it was done right. For all of history until recently, humans did all three parts. Now AI is doing that middle part \[which\] is just following instructions. If that's all you do, now you're going head-to-head with an AI agent, and that's not a good thing to be doing. On the other hand, the value of asking the right questions—defining what needs to be done—is more valuable than ever because it's being amplified, \[as is\] evaluating \[the work the AI produces\]. **Are there jobs you worry about advising someone to go into today?** For sure. It's not like every job \[in our [research](https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publication/canaries-in-the-coal-mine-six-facts-about-the-recent-employment-effects-of-artificial-intelligence/)\] had the exact same balance \[of AI exposure\]. Some had more tasks that could be affected and some had fewer. Customer service and call-center jobs were, for instance, disproportionately exposed. And things change so fast. I was just meeting with some people who are building call-center software, not just where the AI helps answer the questions, but where the AI just talks directly to the customer. It's cutting the human out altogether. There are more and more \[jobs\] beginning to be in that category. The more important thing to focus on is the new things that haven't been created yet. Almost by definition, I can't give you a list of those. The people who are good at figuring out some new way to help a customer or help their boss or help their neighbor solve a problem that previously nobody was solving—that's going to unlock a ton of value. Maybe it's a small thing. Maybe it's a huge thing. Maybe it's going to be a one-person unicorn \[i.e., a $1 billion company\]. When I look around the world, there's no shortage of problems that need to be solved. **What do colleges need to teach kids today?** You really need two kinds of knowledge. You need some kind of domain knowledge, whether it's biology or marketing or finance. And you need AI. It's AI plus X. That's the incredibly powerful combination for the next few years. People who only know AI should probably find a \[business\] partner who has some domain knowledge, who's an expert in nursing or medical care or something. And people who have the domain knowledge but don't have the \[AI\] expertise should learn how to use the tools. That combination of AI plus domain knowledge is what unlocks all the value going forward. It gets back to what I was saying \[about\] knowing how to ask the right questions. You need to know enough about a domain to be able to say, ‘Okay, this is a genuine problem that people are facing.’ **In one of the new courses you recently launched for MasterClass about** [**thriving in the changing economy**](https://www.masterclass.com/classes/the-new-rules-of-wealth) **and using AI to** [**elevate your work**](https://www.masterclass.com/classes/revolutionize-your-workflows-with-ai)**, you say you can quickly tell when an executive is focused on cutting headcount with AI. How do you get leaders out of that mindset?** I was just talking to a chief financial officer and she really wanted to measure the value \[she was getting\] from AI. That's great—you should measure it. I didn't like the next thing she said as much. She said, ‘We're focused on how much headcount reduction we can get.’ I can understand why she zooms in on that—that's something that's easy for a CFO to measure. There's nothing wrong with being more efficient. But way too many people are overemphasizing that and not thinking enough about the new products and services you can create. How can you increase the net promoter score or customer satisfaction? I said, ‘Your job is to come up with these metrics to quantify the value-add side, not just the cost-cutting side. Don't take the easy way out of just focusing on the cost cutting.’ What I've seen in 30 years of working with senior executives is that the more sustainable competitive advantage comes from that new value creation. It also happens to be the harder thing to do, which is part of why it's more sustainable. Your competitors will have a harder time figuring it out. That's true for senior executives…But it's also true for individuals if you want to do a new startup or if you want to add value—we call it \[being\] an intrepreneur—inside your company. Go to your boss with some new way of creating value that your company never did. **You call yourself a ‘mindful optimist’—how do you feel about the trajectory we’re currently on?** Across the world, I run into two groups of people who think they're on opposite sides, but they're actually both making the same mistake. There are these unconditional optimists, and there's lots of them out here who say, ‘Erik, just chill. It's all going to work out. It all worked out in the past. AI is going to create all this wealth and we're going to be fine.’ Then there's another group that’s like, ‘This is really bad. People are going to lose their jobs, and AI is going to destroy a lot of the things that we value.’ They think they're opposites, but they're both actually paradoxically saying the same thing: That AI is going to do this stuff to us, and we're just going to sit back and watch it unfold. I think that's way too passive. The question isn't what will the AI do _to_ us—it's what will we do _with_ AI? How will we use these tools? If we use them effectively, I think it's going to be the greatest time in history to be alive. On the other hand, if we're passive like those two other groups and we just sit back and see what's going to happen, then I'm pretty worried. Then some really bad things could happen. We can't wait for someone to come to rescue us. We are the people we've been waiting for. --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/)  ### Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/) [Open article: Why Leaders Should Ignore Predictions About AI](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-leaders-should-ignore-predictions-about-ai/)  ### Why Leaders Should Ignore Predictions About AI [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-leaders-should-ignore-predictions-about-ai/) [Open article: What Jamie Dimon Thinks About Jobs, an AI Bubble, and How to Measure Schools](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-jamie-dimon-thinks-about-jobs-an-ai-bubble-and-how-to-measure-schools/)  ### What Jamie Dimon Thinks About Jobs, an AI Bubble, and How to Measure Schools [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-jamie-dimon-thinks-about-jobs-an-ai-bubble-and-how-to-measure-schools/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-erik-brynjolfsson-is-a-mindful-optimist-about-ai/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-erik-brynjolfsson-is-a-mindful-optimist-about-ai/"},"headline":"Why Erik Brynjolfsson is a 'mindful optimist' about AI","datePublished":"2026-04-24T00:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-19T07:41:26.180Z","description":"Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson on the skills that matter, the executive trap to avoid, and why we can’t be passive about AI.","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-erik-brynjolfsson-is-a-mindful-optimist-about-ai/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jacob Clemente","jobTitle":"Senior Reporter, AI & Work","url":"https://time.com/author/jacob-clemente/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-erik-brynjolfsson-is-a-mindful-optimist-about-ai/","name":"Why Erik Brynjolfsson is a 'mindful optimist' about AI"}}]}] ```