Demis Hassabis, the chief executive of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) subsidiary Google’s DeepMind, is recasting career advice for the AI age, arguing that mastering powerful AI tools may now be a better bet for students than chasing traditional internships.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos alongside Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Hassabis said he expects artificial intelligence to start biting into junior and entry-level roles this year, including internships, as companies automate routine work. That shift, he suggested, undermines the old model where students learned by performing repetitive tasks inside big organizations.
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“If I was to talk to a class of undergrads right now, I’d be telling them to get really, unbelievably proficient with these tools,” Hassabis said, calling AI systems “amazing creative tools” that are effectively available to everyone. He added that deep fluency and hands-on projects with AI can “maybe [be] better than a traditional internship” for letting graduates “leapfrog” into being ready professionals.
Hassabis has repeatedly argued that, in a labor market being reshaped by AI, what candidates can actually build with technology is becoming a stronger signal to employers than short stints at marquee firms.
Yet he has not abandoned more conventional advice. In talks at SXSW London and other events, he has urged students to prioritize STEM subjects, particularly mathematics, physics and computer science, to understand how AI systems work under the hood, while combining that knowledge with expertise in other fields where AI will be applied.
He also encourages young people to “hack around” with the latest models to discover novel uses, and to treat university as a chance to learn how they learn. “Using the time you have as an undergraduate to understand yourself better, and how you learn best” is crucial, he said in an interview last year at Queens’ College, Cambridge, adding that “how to pick up new material really quickly” is key.
