Palantir chief executive Alex Karp says two groups of people are sure of a future as AI takes jobs. The first has vocational training, and the second is people with conditions such as ADHD, autism and dyslexia, known by the broad term neurodivergent.
He made the claim in an interview on TBPN, a live tech talk show. Everybody is worried about their future, he says, and he calls the technology dangerous because AI will likely take jobs, especially white-collar jobs.
A host asked what people should do with coding agents, AI tools that write software, and how valuable learning to code is. In reply, Karp listed skills he says used to be precious: low-end coding, low-end legal work, and low-end reading and writing. Real expertise is worth much more now, he says, and he names two kinds, technical expertise and knowing how clients work.
Technical expertise belongs to his first group. He points to Germany, where two of the three kinds of high school are vocational. People who build cars at BMW or work at Airbus hold complicated jobs, he says. They skipped college and finished a high-end high school without debt.
His second group is harder to pin down. Karp says he defines neurodivergent broadly, and Business Insider says he extends the label to almost anyone who takes an unconventional path. He points to the two hosts, who passed on corporate jobs to build their own ventures. In his telling, a corporate job is like sitting in class, learning material and repeating it back, which he calls not valuable.
He calls the change in skills an inversion. In his phrasing, people with normal-shaped skills are dyslexics now, meaning the work they do well used to be valuable and no longer is. In his view, they must learn to act like an artist, looking at things from a different direction and building something unique.
A host asked whether his view of white-collar jobs had changed in the past six months or so. Karp answered with two cases. A neurodivergent person who takes initiative and is highly educated is in great shape, he said. A lawyer who is not neurodivergent and is “like lawyer 14506” has a problem.
