FIRECracker is a world-travelling early retiree. She used to live in one of the most expensive cities in Canada, but instead of drowning in debt, she rejected home ownership. What resulted was a 7-figure portfolio, which has allowed her and her husband to retire at 31 and travel the world. Their story has been featured on CBC, the Huffington Post, CNBC, BNN, Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance. To date, it is the most shared story in CBC history and their viral video on CBC’s On the Money has garnered 4.5 Million views.
A fellow FIRE blogger, MrNomadNumbers, came to visit us in Valencia recently and showed me some AI capabilities that blew my mind. Before he retired, he was a software developer, like us, so he knows his way around code. Within just 3 hours, he was able to not only write a song from scratch but also generate a video (using zero stock footage because everything was generated by AI), and add karaoke-style lyrics to it to boot. It looked so professional, it looked like it was developed by a production crew of at least 10 people, but in reality, it was just him, working in his Airbnb. And the cost for all this? $25.
I was in awe but also at the same time, terrified. If AI is this good now and can replace an entire production crew and musicians, what jobs are going to be left?
This makes FIRE even more imperative, because the stock market has been on a tear lately, so it pays to be an investor, not an employee.
In fact, nearly 40% of the companies in the S&P 500 are tech stocks with AI driving their profits. Meanwhile, companies are starting to lay people off, replacing them with AI and becoming more efficient.
But as great as it is to be an investor, you still need a job to get to FIRE, and for those of us who are parents, what jobs opportunities if any will there be left for our kids?
My original strategy of promoting the software developer career path is no longer a sure thing, given that AI already knows how to code. In fact, Microsoft has said that 30% of their code is now written by AI. As a result, Microsoft said it was able to save more than $500 million in 2024 and boost their sales by 9%. After 9000 jobs were cut, their stock shot up.
Senior developers will still be very sought after, given that you still need very advanced and experienced coders to maintain and debug AI, but entry level coders are screwed. That goes for most other entry-level white-collar job, which doesn’t bode well for the next generation.
This made me go into an anxiety spiral searching for AI-proof jobs.
Here are the top 3 categories I found:
AI-Powered Entrepreneurship
Just like the industrial revolution, whenever there’s huge innovation, there are also huge opportunities. But you no longer need massive amount of capital to build factories to take advantage of this new technological gold rush. You can do it from the comfort of your own home (as my FIRE blogger friend recently demonstrated).
This enables those who understand AI to multiply their productivity and use it to start businesses that can scale and profit. After spending the initial 3 hours to set up his system, MrNomadNumbers is able to churn out customized songs in less than 5 mins, for less than $5, and sell those songs for $200 a piece, he’s netting a whopping $185 for less than 5 mins of work.
Another friend founded a startup called Nilo, which is using generative AI to build custom-designed game engines. They just received $4M in seed funding, and this is another example of a product that simply couldn’t exist before AI. Check out their demo reel!
For those who are self-driven, Entrepreneurship is the perfect solution for jobs being replaced by AI. This is what I will be training my son to do in the future. And because traditional schooling and degrees aren’t great at teaching people how to become entrepreneurs, Worldschooling is something we want to seriously explore because this type of unconventional learning tends to get better results at teaching kids how to think for themselves and be self-driven instead of being told what to do by schools.
AI Infrastructure Support
Nvidia is investing up to $100 billion dollars on building data centers to the AI demand. Guess who will be needed to maintain these data center?
Electricians and plumbers.
These are jobs that are relatively hard to be replaced by AI, since it doesn’t make sense cost wise to build a robot to do it.
The CEO of Nvidia has said they will need to hire hundreds of thousands of electricians and plumber, so this seems like a solid career path with really good return on investment for your tuition.
Also, AI consumes a ton of power—a single AI interaction consumes 10 times as much power a google search.
Where is all that power going to come from? This will create a lot of power generation jobs to produce enough energy to feed the AI bots.
AI engineers will also be needed to maintain those bots. So, it pays to be in a field that supports AI. In fact, Meta recently offered an AI engineer $200 million over several years, to work for them. If you can get into the AI race, it’s a gold rush.
Skilled Trades
HVAC technicians (for cooling and heating systems), building contractors, plumbers, electricians, elevator mechanics, etc are AI proof since it’s doesn’t make sense cost-wise for AI to replace.
And also, the cost of a trades degree is hundreds of thousands cheaper than a 4 year university degree. These jobs have fantastic POT scores (see our book Quit Like a Millionaire) which shortens your time to FI drastically and prevents you from having to go into debt to pay for an expensive degree.
Use the skilled trades to get to FI as fast as possible, then you can reap the rewards of being an investor.
What do think? Are you worried about your job being replace by AI? If you’re parent, are you worried about the lack of entry opportunities out there when your kid(s) graduate?
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