--- title: At TIME100, Executives Confront AI’s Threat to Entry-Level Jobs | TIME description: Rapid AI progress is enabling the automation of increasingly more entry-level work. How should leaders respond? The question framed a panel discussion at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 22, which featured three executives which featured three executives whose work is closely tied to the technology. The conversation was moderated by TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar. “A year ago, I never thought the advancements that have happened would happen,” said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, who appeared on a similar TIME panel in 2025. Whereas a year ago, people were merely talking about agentic AI, today they are actually implementing functional agentic systems. (Booking.com, a subsidiary of Booking Holdings, sponsored the TIME100 Summit.) canonical: https://time.com/video/FBYpilQ1/ og:title: At TIME100, Executives Confront AI’s Threat to Entry-Level Jobs og:description: Rapid AI progress is enabling the automation of increasingly more entry-level work. How should leaders respond? The question framed a panel discussion at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 22, which featured three executives which featured three executives whose work is closely tied to the technology. The conversation was moderated by TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar. “A year ago, I never thought the advancements that have happened would happen,” said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, who appeared on a similar TIME panel in 2025. Whereas a year ago, people were merely talking about agentic AI, today they are actually implementing functional agentic systems. (Booking.com, a subsidiary of Booking Holdings, sponsored the TIME100 Summit.) og:url: https://time.com/video/FBYpilQ1/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FBYpilQ1/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: At TIME100, Executives Confront AI’s Threat to Entry-Level Jobs twitter:description: Rapid AI progress is enabling the automation of increasingly more entry-level work. How should leaders respond? The question framed a panel discussion at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 22, which featured three executives which featured three executives whose work is closely tied to the technology. The conversation was moderated by TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar. “A year ago, I never thought the advancements that have happened would happen,” said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, who appeared on a similar TIME panel in 2025. Whereas a year ago, people were merely talking about agentic AI, today they are actually implementing functional agentic systems. (Booking.com, a subsidiary of Booking Holdings, sponsored the TIME100 Summit.) twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FBYpilQ1/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * Business # At TIME100, Executives Confront AI’s Threat to Entry-Level Jobs > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: At TIME100, Executives Confront AI’s Threat to Entry-Level Jobs [Watch (HLS stream): At TIME100, Executives Confront AI’s Threat to Entry-Level Jobs](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FBYpilQ1.m3u8) (20:13)  _Published 2026-04-22. Rapid AI progress is enabling the automation of increasingly more entry-level work. How should leaders respond? The question framed a panel discussion at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 22, which featured three executives which featured three executives whose work is closely tied to the technology. The conversation was moderated by TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar. “A year ago, I never thought the advancements that have happened would happen,” said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, who appeared on a similar TIME panel in 2025. Whereas a year ago, people were merely talking about agentic AI, today they are actually implementing functional agentic systems. (Booking.com, a subsidiary of Booking Holdings, sponsored the TIME100 Summit.)_ --- Apr 22, 2026 8:12 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [TIME100 AI Innovators: Nancy Xu](/video/KPvgcZwx/) ### TIME100 AI Innovators: Nancy Xu [TIME100 | See Everyone on the 2022 TIME100 List](/video/9nPb8px2/) ### TIME100 | See Everyone on the 2022 TIME100 List [Jared Kushner Interview at the TIME100 Summit](/video/o3dh1pp4/) ### Jared Kushner Interview at the TIME100 Summit --- ## Transcript Thank you, all of you, for being here. And thank you for doing this. It's a really big topic that we have and not that much time. So I'm going to begin, if I might, by just trying to set the stage a little bit about where all of you stand on this. And AI is in every conversation, whether it's the economy, energy, geopolitics. But it seems to me that a lot of that conversation swings a bit like a pendulum. On the one hand, oh my God, all of us are going to lose our jobs, especially people like me. Journalists, right? Or the other side, which is this is all good and great. It'll solve cancer, make business much better. So if I could ask you, starting perhaps with you Novarina, on a scale of 1 to 10, one being I need a new career, ten being this is a force for good which will help us solve our most intractable problems. Where do you stand? Oh well, so great to be here. And of course, you're starting with the hardest question coming from trust and governance. I would say my answer might surprise you because I'm a solid nine. And the reason for that nine is not because of AI. It's because of us. And what I mean by that is, you know, at credo AI, we spend a lot of time putting guardrails, controls. How can we actually get confidence in this technology? And yes, we think deeply about what can go wrong with AI. But something that I encourage my team to think about is how can we get this right? And that optimism needs a lot of discipline. It needs investment in AI trust. It needs investment in leadership so that we can actually reskill and retrain people. And it needs a lot of confidence that you can actually put the right guardrails in place. So solid nine, I believe we can get it right and we will make it get it right. So nine with a caveat, with. Nine with a caveat. Glenn. Well, thank you very much for having us here. And that is an interesting question. I think it really depends on where you sit in the world, because I assure you, yesterday my plumber came to help with a problem we had. He is not worried about a droid plumber coming in and placing his job at all. Not happening now. Not in his lifetime. But on the other hand though, there are people right now we all know who are losing their jobs because of AI replacements. So for them, it's incredibly important. Now from us as the world's largest travel company, this is an incredible, great tool for us to make travel better for everybody. Everybody here travels. Every one of you I know has had a terrible experience traveling. You've had terrible trouble putting something together, putting together what you want. And you know, and I know that AI is going to make travel so much better. And we're doing that right now. But I understand if people start losing their jobs, they don't have money to travel. That'd be really bad for us. So I'll do the really decisive thing and say somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle, it's a five. Six. Yeah, five. Yeah. Clara. I think the way you frame it is, is maybe one of our challenges right now is that it's too extreme. It's either everything is wonderful or AI Duma ism. And I think the opportunity ahead, the reality ahead is somewhere more in the middle. We are living right now through the biggest reorganization of human labor ever. It's faster than the Industrial revolution, it's faster than the internet, and there's no equivalent to the G.I. Bill or to the Union yet defined. And so the answer to your question is it depends on us. And if you ask Gen Z today, the answer doesn't look good. Gen Z is entering the worst job market in 37 years. Over half of Gen Z are either underemployed, not utilizing their college degree, or unemployed entirely. We all know a young person like this. And you know, my friend Samantha is a great example. She graduated from UC Berkeley with honors a couple of years ago. She interned at Tesla and Warner Brothers, and for nearly a year she was unemployed, applying to ten jobs a day. I mean, we all know young people like this. The system is not okay, but we can still choose a better ending. And I think it starts with a lot of the incredible leaders in this room. So 4 or 6. I want us to do something about it. And if we do, AI has has an opportunity to address so much of the inequality and so much of the anger that is currently in our society. So, so, Glenn, you were on the stage last year and we had a chat then about AI and where it's going. It's been a year. So much has happened. It feels like something happens, you know, every hour almost. Right. There's a new piece of news. You've been deploying AI at booking. What has surprised you over the last year? I think, well. I'm tempted to say the decline in our stock price due to the belief that AI is going to replace us, but that we do not believe it's going to happen. I'd say the speed with which new models have dropped, the way people can now use it. I mean, the fact is, you cannot you know, you can't buy a Mac mini until August if you want, because everybody went out to buy them so they could do their cloud coding on their own side hustle and stuff. That's amazing. And those things I a year ago we talked. I did not believe. I never even thought that the advancements that have happened would happen. And they have happened. And now we do see that people talked about a genetic AI. And a year ago that was people talked about it. Now people are doing it and we're seeing incredible advancements in this. Now, the issue goes back to your first question. What does that mean for us, for our society, for everyone. And nobody knows the answer. Of course, everybody's just speculating, but I understand that people are concerned about it. And I think that's why we have people who are thinking about how should we do what should be the trust, what should be the guardrails? So you've set me up nicely because I was going to come to you in the arena. The as all these models have dropped, as we get news about the news about mythos, for instance, right now from anthropic, there has also been in parallel a conversation about the bounds of AI, right, where we should put them, questions of safety, questions of trust that I know you talk about a lot and spend a lot of time on. Are those two conversations diverging or converging? Like, are we is one feeding into the other or not really? I think a lot depends upon context, organization, and leadership. And I think that's one of the reasons we all are here on this stage talking about it. The organizations that we are seeing actually winning in AI are not only winning because of innovation and capability, they're winning because they are putting in place very robust infrastructure around guardrails, reskilling, and really thinking about what does winning in this age of AI really look like? So I would say that it really depends upon context. Yes. I, you know, I'm based out of Silicon Valley. There is let's move fast and break things mentality going on with a lot of startups. Are they going to be durable and are they going to have sustainable innovation? I don't think so unless they make trust a core focus for them as they're innovating. Can I ask you? So how do you do that though? Because we you know, we'll switch on the news and there's a conference on AI safety. Paris last year, India this year. How do you make that an imperative for those startups? Yeah. So a couple of things I would say one is really understanding context of use. So as an example, if you're going to be deploying a lot of agents in customer service, you really need to define what does success mean. Is it reliable? Is it highly secure systems? Is it systems that are fair so that it can treat every customer with the same, you know, responses? So one is really context. The second is, I would say not thinking about governance as a roadblock, but as a launchpad to AI innovation. And unfortunately, I've been in this space now for six years. We created the AI governance category and every conversation, and I'm surprised you didn't start with that, that governance is a dirty word. I think that's the only way you can win in AI. And a lot of companies, um, especially in startups, there's this tension of innovation versus governance because they're like, I just need to get some get ahead of the next guy, right? And then the third thing is, I think it's a lot about values. So as a founder and I loved what Clara said, because, you know, us as founders, we don't like to predict the future. We like to create it. And a big part of that is really betting on us that we are going to get this right. So the last part is really around values. You know, thinking about the long term, but having that micro urgency right now to continue innovating and bringing capabilities. One of the things that Narayana mentioned was reskilling and which goes back to where you started about the question of jobs. You helped build AI at Meta at Salesforce. You are now about to do something to address this problem. We'd like to hear what you're about to do, but I'd also like to ask you, how big is this problem? And do you see a solution in sight? This is a massive problem because young people are the future of this country. And if they're not hired in meaningful work today, if they're not hirable today, that hurts everyone across the country and around the world. Um, you can see there are really smart people like Novarina and so many others working on making AI safe and, and profitable for businesses. But who's doing this for regular people? Who's doing this for Samantha and for all the 25 year olds out there who are unemployed? And so I think there's an incredible opportunity with AI. AI is part of the disruption. It's a big driver of the disruption, but it's also a big part of the solution. And really, the only way to keep up with the pace of how quickly AI is changing is to use AI itself. And so I look out there today, and it's a tale of two job seekers for those Gen Z and otherwise who know AI companies are fighting to hire them. For those who don't, though, and that's the majority of people, they're in a much tougher spot. And so I think Gen Z is so well positioned to learn AI really better than anyone else. Today there's a there's a gap with respect to a lot of Gen Z are concerned about AI. They're angry about AI, and so many are just boycotting it altogether, which really isn't doing them or society any favors, because those are the exact people I want being part of building the solution in a way that's thoughtful and good for society. And so what I'm launching today is it's called the New Work Foundation. And it's a tech company, but it's a nonprofit. And our mission is to equip young American workers with the tools, the technology, and the information that they need to thrive in an economy that's being restructured by AI. Great. Well, we all hope it works. Um, how do you think about this, Glenn? Because you run a big organization, but you also have customers all over the world. You touched on this earlier. So if we're all going to be out of a job, We're not going on vacation. Yeah. No. And we know that there's a great irony in that, that AI replacing jobs. But then there's no need for the AI if nobody has a job. So here's the thing that's interesting. And it's not only the difference in the US where we just talked about people have different ways they're going to approach jobs, etc. but it's a global thing and we operate very globally. We operate in almost every country in the world, and people are looking at different things and people who are worried about jobs, etc. those places where people are not thinking AI, they're just thinking, how do I get off of my very menial job into a better job? Here's the problem is, and that is the areas where people would leave from poverty to a higher middle income were the routes that are now being taken away by AI. Now AI is taking away the ability of the more, let's call it jobs that are relatively low education jobs. Those are being taken away, these automated jobs. So it's making it harder for the rest of the world. Customer service is a perfect example of this. So in the Philippines, a not insignificant amount of the GDP. I don't remember the exact number, but it's possibly maybe 10%. I'm guessing right now is done by customer service that's outsourced around the world. Now we are currently at Booking Holdings. We are companies booking.com, Priceline, etc. we transfer that customer service. Many of those calls now go to an AI system. The customers love it because it's faster. You're not on hold for an hour and the bot knows exactly how to solve the problem. So that's wonderful for the customer. But that means that that person who's in the Philippines had a job now doesn't have that job anymore. And now how do they enter the world of going up to better and better jobs? Because they know that starting point, that lowest rung on the ladder, has been pulled away by AI. And what are we going to do about that, by the way, taxi drivers. Look how many people have been in a Waymo or equivalent. Those jobs going away where people how many when's the last time you went to attacks you, the human being here and the person was a native born American. Very rare. These are immigrants who've come to America. First job they got was being a taxi driver. Those jobs are going away. That's AI in action. Now it's okay because I personally, I love being in the. Waymo is great. It was fun. It's enjoyable. What do we do about that person's job and then go further up the scale. Go into your upper middle class or middle class driving a truck, a big truck, an 18 Wheeler. That's a pretty darn good job. Pays very well. You didn't need to go to college to do it. And it's good those jobs are being eliminated by AI. And how are we going to help and what are we going to do? So I'll push it over here. Waiting for that. What do we do? How do we how do we arrange this? What do we do societal so that we are able to help make this change because it's happening so fast. In the past, we had these technological changes, jobs disappeared, but there was enough time for people to learn new jobs and go there. Now it's happening overnight, it seems so. We don't need AI. Glenn's doing my job for me because I was about to come to you, but they just put on that thing of how we solve this. On that question. I'm thinking of other big global challenges, right? Say climate change, for instance. And one of the problems we run into, we have climate conferences, we have the Cop conferences, is trying to get geopolitical actors who often have opposing interests to sign on the dotted line. How do you do it in this world? Is that for me? Yeah. You bring all the hard questions for me. Nicole. Um, it's very hard because right now I think we have a massive challenge around incentive misalignment. Um, there are actors working from AI, optimism, innovation at all costs. There are actors acting from safety. There's this whole challenge of policy not keeping pace with AI innovation. It is a very hard problem. I think the way to solve for that is we don't have all the answers, but let me propose a few. One is becomes really critical for public private partnership, and that's one of the key roles credo AI plays in the ecosystem, where we work very closely with AI builders, the Frontier Labs hyperscalers, but at the same time work with policymakers, regulators to really sort of create the translation engine between the two. The second is, I think, really getting granular on what does success and what does good look like? But that's also very contextual. It depends upon every application, every sector. And that, I would say is one of the hardest problems defining what good looks like. And then the third is leadership. I think to Glenn's point, what can we do? I think we should look to ourselves, what are we doing for our people when this massive disruption in jobs is going to happen, when we don't have a playbook that we can actually go and refer to? Because there are no playbooks in AI right now. How do we enable reskilling? How do we think about the whole paradigm of learning and unlearning very quickly and experimenting fast with I. And I think that is a very important job for the for the leaders here. So, Clara, on that question of leadership and solving some of these problems, or at least beginning to solve some of these problems, and forgive me for being blunt, but why should we trust the people who are building this technology? You shouldn't. We have to earn the trust, right? And I think that that's been the challenge with AI to date, is that it's been driven by profit maximization. And now we need an equally strong force, an equally ambitious group of people to have a different set of priorities and a different set of goals that we're optimizing for. I agree. Leaders can do a lot. Business leaders can do a lot. I know a CEO who has realized that he doesn't need a large percentage of his workforce, especially the entry level, because of the AI automation that they've rolled out. But he is choosing to slow roll that change and investing as much as he can to upskill those individuals so that he can keep as many as possible. And then even those he can't keep, they'll be better set up for their next thing. So these are the types of decisions that we all can make every day in the boardroom, in the executive team. And then I think at a at a national level, it's very difficult. This is a tough environment. We live in a very polarized system. And so I think but don't lose hope, I think we can start small. And I think that Gen Z is hungry for this. They want people who are in their corner who they they know will never they won't will not be monetizing them, but actually wanting to help them. So we only have a few minutes left. So if I could end again with a question for all three of you, let's say we convene a year from now, um, much as we did last year, Glenn. And, and I'm asking you, looking back on the year, whether it's been a success or whether it's been a failure when it comes to these big picture questions about AI? Um, what start with you, Glenn, what would be a success for you and what would be, I mean, let's say actually maybe missed opportunity a year from now. Well, I'm hoping a year from now that we'll have rolled out some of the things we're working on right now that will make our mission, which is making it easier for everybody to experience the world, easier for everybody to experience the world. And by using AI to really bring things that people are so frustrated about, make those go away and make it easier. At the same time, the idea of upskilling, upskilling our workforce, I absolutely believe that is a critical part of our business, is making sure my 25,000 people are prepared for the future, making sure we provide them with the tools, the learning, the training. So even if at some point we no longer need a certain part of the unit of our business, which has happened, we don't have manual translators anymore. All those people we had to let go because it was all done by AI. I want to make sure that their skills are increased enough so they can get a different job at another place and be successful. That would be what I see is success. Clara, what about you? I believe the next 12 months are critical. AI models are progressing at a rate faster than I think most people realize, and. But a lot can happen in 12 months. And so I would like us to come back here, and I'd like us to see the numbers change from last week's Gallup poll, which showed 31% of Gen Z feeling angry toward AI. I want instead Gen Z to feel hopeful about AI and actively using it and learning it, because that's really the only way to thrive in this upcoming economy. Sabrina. Um, a year from now, I would say success would mean that we have invested equally in trust and governance as we have in AI innovation and, and after. I would say this, you know, how it would look like is there's a higher, I would say, trust in AI, higher trust and confidence in the applications that everyone is deploying AI in. Well, we're going to have to have you back in a year. Yes. On that note, thank you very much. And thank you to all of you. Thank you. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"At TIME100, Executives Confront AI’s Threat to Entry-Level Jobs","description":"Rapid AI progress is enabling the automation of increasingly more entry-level work. How should leaders respond? The question framed a panel discussion at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 22, which featured three executives which featured three executives whose work is closely tied to the technology. 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