What should I really study? Will the degree I am pursuing matter in five years? Ten years? These questions on the careers best suited for students today are being asked in classrooms, families, and counselling sessions. They are not new. But they are pressing harder.

The unease is one of pressure, of too much changing at once. AI deepens that unease, but the question underneath is older. It is about education itself, and what students need to carry into a working life none of us can fully predict.

AI is now a fact of daily life, including at the workplace. Job roles are being reorganised, tasks and workflows redistributed among teams and tools. Turnaround times are getting shorter, and expectations of productivity rising.

This is showing up across different kinds of work. In design, for example, a field once thought to be the exclusive domain of human intuition, generative tools are already improving output quality and freeing time for higher-order creativity (Figma, 2026). Similarly, in financial services, there is increasing focus on the responsible deployment of AI and its institutional integration (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, 2026).

Used actively and with intention, AI is more than a functional productivity tool. It advances what a single person can take on: A young professional fluent in digital tools for research, analysis, and execution can now do work that once needed a team.

Think of AI as a huge, tireless brain holding answers to almost any question. But what to ask, within which........

© Indian Express