If recent college graduates want to get ahead in today’s job market, they should focus on being “literate, conversant [and] facile” in artificial intelligence, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the CNBC Invest in America Forum on Wednesday.
“AI is not going to take your job. Someone who knows how to use AI is going to take your job,” Bessent said, adding: “At the end of the day for the overall economy, we’re seeing these big productivity gains that we really haven’t seen in decades.”
In terms of the stock market, AI has pushed multiple tech companies into rarified air: Nine of the world’s 10 most valuable public companies, by market capitalization, are involved in AI software or hardware. They have market caps above $1 trillion, led by chipmaker Nvidia’s $4.79 trillion and Alphabet’s $4.04 trillion, as of Wednesday afternoon. Some analysts have expressed concern over the AI industry’s boom, indicating that its top-heavy presence in the stock market could mask a weaker underlying economy.
Within workplaces themselves, AI adoption is increasingly common, but the technology’s ability to increase worker productivity is mixed. A majority of employees do save time using AI, but nearly 40% of their efficiency gains are offset by the time required to edit or fact-check AI-generated content, found a recent report from HR platform Workday. Long-term use of AI could weaken users’ critical thinking skills, some researchers say.
