(Image credit: Getty Images)
For months, the dominant AI doom-narrative has focused on job losses. The fear of automation replacing workers, companies restructuring around AI and fears that entire professions could become obsolete have felt very real.Now, two developments this month complicate that picture, not necessarily by denying the disruption, but by showing what some organizations think comes next.In June, Anthropic launched a fellowship program that pays participants $85,000 a year to help nonprofits adopt AI tools. Around the same time, new data revealed how aggressively China has been reshaping higher education, cutting thousands of degree programs while expanding courses in artificial intelligence, robotics and semiconductor technology.Notably, both are explicit responses to the labor-market upheaval. And yet together, they point to the next phase of the AI revolution that suggests a demand for a new category of AI-literate professionals who can help organizations adapt, even as it eliminates other roles.Anthropic is funding people to learn AIAnthropic recently unveiled Claude Corps, a year-long fellowship that places early-career workers inside nonprofit organizations to help those groups integrate AI into their operations.The numbers are substantial. According to Anthropic's announcement, the company has committed an initial $150 million to teach 1,000 fellows how to use Claude and match them with nonprofits across America. The first cohort of 100 fellows starts in October 2026, with applications open until July 17, and at least 400 nonprofits will host fellows over the program's run.Importantly, Anthropic funds and steers the program but isn't the direct employer. As Tech Times reported, CodePath, a nonprofit that helps first-generation and low-income students enter the tech workforce, acts as the official employer of record, while Social Finance handles measurement and evaluation. Fellows are employed by CodePath at $85,000 per year plus benefits.The fellowship is focused on practical implementation, meaning no prior prompt engineering or computer science skills are required. According to the site, anyone over 18 with under two years of full-time work experience is welcome to apply, regardless of educational background. Participants help nonprofits identify opportunities for automation and improve workflows using Claude.Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.What I find interesting, however, is that Anthropic announced Claude Corps the same day CEO Dario Amodei published an essay arguing that AI-driven job displacement may be unavoidable and calling for universal basic income funded by taxes on AI companies. Armodei said, "Mechanisms such as universal basic income could be financed through taxes on relevant companies or raising the capital gains tax."So while the company frames the fellowship as a way of investing directly in helping workers absorb change, it is not evidence that jobs are safe. In other words, the program exists because of disruption, not in spite of it.China is making a similar bet — under pressureAnthropic isn't alone in wagering on AI skills. According to Ministry of Education data reported by VnExpress, Chinese universities revoked or suspended 12,200 undergraduate programs between 2021 and 2025 and introduced 10,200 new ones, adjusting more than 30% of all undergraduate majors.Many of the discontinued programs were in arts, humanities, foreign languages and management, while new offerings cluster around artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors and data science. Nine universities have introduced majors in "embodied intelligence," a field that combines AI with physical systems such as robots.But this shift comes with a note of caution. As WION noted, it's a response to a jobs emergency as youth unemployment for the 16–24 age group has hovered between 15% and 19%, and more than 12.7 million students were set to graduate in 2026 alone. Beijing is reshaping its talent pipeline because the old one stopped delivering jobs.Still, the underlying logic mirrors a familiar shift for those who remember navigating internet literacy in the early 2000s. AI fluency may soon become a baseline workplace expectation rather than a specialized advantage.The takeaway When people think about AI careers, they often picture machine learning researchers, software engineers or data scientists. Those roles remain important, but they represent only a small fraction of the workforce.The larger opportunity may be in a different category completely. People who understand both their industry and how to apply AI within it could be in demand. For instance, hospitals need people who understand healthcare and AI; nonprofits need people who understand fundraising and AI; and schools need people who understand education and AI.You can see the pattern here as in many cases, domain expertise paired with AI literacy may prove more valuable in any given industry. Claude Corps is built on exactly that premise as it screens for comfort with AI tools and judgment.If these trends hold, the most valuable could be learning how to evaluate AI outputs, design effective prompts, integrate AI into existing workflows and recognize where automation helps and where human judgment remains essential.Follow Amanda Caswell and stay ahead of the AI curve
