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The Rise of “AI-Proof Careers”

Across the UK, instead of chasing traditional white-collar jobs, more young people are choosing skilled trades like plumbing, construction, electrical work, and welding, according to Reuter reporters Catarina Demony and Marissa Davison.

The reason? As companies automate more entry-level office roles, many young workers are worried they’ll be replaced before they even get started. 1 in 6 British employers says AI will reduce headcount in the next year.

For students like 18-year-old Maryna Yaroshenko, that signals a clear message: choose a career AI can’t easily replicate. She’s now training to be a plumber at the City of Westminster College - a hands-on job she believes will stay in human hands for decades.

Here’s what’s happening on the ground:

• Trade programs are filling up. Colleges across London report rising demand for construction, engineering, and hospitality courses.

• University isn’t the automatic choice anymore. With high tuition costs and a tougher tech job market, some students feel a degree no longer guarantees stability.

• AI is completely shifting career strategy. Studies show the first jobs AI disrupts are junior roles, which makes younger workers especially vulnerable.

Wages are part of the appeal too. Skilled trades often pay competitively (plumbers earn around $50,000 a year) and many eventually run their own businesses, boosting their earning power even further.

And with an aging workforce in fields like plumbing and electrical work, demand for new talent is only growing.

Could AI Give Your Home a Glow-Up?

A massive, gem-shaped convention center just opened on Shanghai’s riverfront - and it’s not designed by any human.

For the new home of China’s World AI Conference, architects fed an AI system a bunch of rules (sunlight, angles, floor space, energy use) and let it crank out designs overnight. By morning, they had 800 versions waiting in their inbox. AI did the number-crunching, and the humans picked the prettiest one.

The result: A dark, crystal-like building that sparkles by day and turns pitch black after sunset, sitting right in the middle of a neighborhood now nicknamed “AI Valley.”

Some architects say AI saves up on weeks of work, but others worry we’ll lose the human touch, and the quirky styles that come with it. What do you think - would you use AI to design your home?

AI Around the World

In Switzerland, chocolate giant Barry Callebaut is teaming up with NotCo AI to speed up how new chocolate recipes are created. NotCo’s AI (trained on 10 years of food-science data) can test ingredient combos and even “reverse-engineer” products, letting the company develop healthier, or low-sugar formulas much faster.

In the US, the government is weighing a plan to let diesel generators help power AI data centers as electricity demand spikes. These backup machines (already sitting unused outside Walmart stores and data centers) could add power equivalent to dozens of nuclear plants, but pollution rules currently limit their use.