The Future of Work
From Typewriters to AI and Why Kids Must Be Future-Ready
In the 1980s, the arrival of computers was met with suspicion, panic, and an odd sense of betrayal. Secretaries who had mastered typewriters worried their skills would be rendered useless. Some companies even stockpiled typewriter ribbons, just in case “this computer thing” didn’t last. But it did. And today, using a typewriter in the workplace is about as useful as sending a pigeon with your CV.
Fast forward to today’s revolution, Artificial Intelligence. Once again, we’re seeing fear and resistance. Only this time, the machines don’t just type for you; they can think, write, solve, recommend, even code. The parallels are striking, but so are the stakes.
Recently, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic (the makers of Claude, an advanced AI system), made a bold but sobering claim: entry-level jobs are disappearing fast because of AI. The very roles that help young professionals get their foot in the door; like junior analysts, customer service agents, or basic content creators are increasingly being automated. This isn’t a prediction. It’s already happening.
So where does that leave today’s children? Or tomorrow’s workforce?
Unlike the shift from typewriters to computers, which took a couple of decades to truly embed, the shift to AI is happening at warp speed. Generative AI, like Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Google’s Gemini, is already reshaping sectors from law to design to healthcare.
This is why getting children AI-ready isn’t optional. It’s essential. We must equip kids not just to use AI, but to understand it; ethically, creatively, and critically. That means going beyond coding clubs and YouTube how-tos. It means teaching:
Prompt literacy - knowing how to ask AI the right questions.
AI ethics - understanding bias, misinformation, and decision-making boundaries.
Human creativity - where machines stop, but imagination begins.
Adaptability - the super-skill that lets kids thrive in uncertain futures.
During the rise of computers, many feared job losses. But instead of ending work, computers created entirely new fields: software engineering, digital marketing, data science, UX design. Similarly, AI won’t eliminate all jobs, it will eliminate the way we used to do them.
Just as today no one is hired for “typing fast” alone, tomorrow no one will be hired for simply “knowing how to Google” or “writing a basic report.” Those skills will be assumed, or done by machines.
Instead, the demand will be for those who can:
Work with AI as a collaborator
Ask better questions than AI can answer
Build tools, not just use them
Kids Are Not Just Consumers, They Are the Next Creators
We must shift our education systems from passive tech consumption to active, ethical creation. Imagine a 10-year-old building a chatbot that tells Kenyan folktales. Or a teenager training an AI model to detect local climate patterns. This is not science fiction, it’s possible today, but only if we teach them how.The same way we taught typing in schools as a basic skill in the 90s, we must now teach prompt engineering, critical data analysis, and creative problem-solving using AI. If we don’t, we risk raising a generation unprepared for the very world they will inherit.
From typewriters to touchscreens, the story of work has always been about adaptation. AI is not the end of work, it’s the next chapter. But this chapter can only be written well if we bring our children into the story now.
As Amodei’s warning signals, the future won’t wait for us to catch up. But if we act today through inclusive, future-facing education we can raise not just users of AI, but shapers of what comes next.
Let’s stop preparing kids for jobs that won’t exist but instead prepare them for the world they’re actually going to build.