To make this situation as clear as possible I will be dividing the rest of this text into 4 parts: The context, my main goal, my self-evaluation, and the question I have.
First let’s start with the context:
I’m a 21 year old who's spent many hours reading and applying tips from 80,000 Hours' career guide, I'm a high school graduate, a Swedish citizen, and also considering starting an undergraduate degree next year in autumn 2026 through university entrance exams.
My main goal with all of this is to do as much good as possible before AGI comes while considering that I don’t have an undergraduate degree yet.
Now I’ll show my own self-evaluation on the situation:
- Based on this article we will know whether AGI will come soon or not somewhere between 2028-2032 with an approximate estimate of around 30-80% chance. Because I don’t have an undergraduate degree yet I need to make a bet that AGI will not come anytime soon
- To do careers that AI may have a weakness on in the future, I realized that there are these 4 types of skills that needs to be focused on, with this career strategy to think about and do depending on how the situation looks like while I'm in university
- I also noticed that it’s best to go for subjects that are the most fundamental and quantitative which is economics, computer science, engineering, and political science in that exact order (the subjects I didn’t mention have smaller chances of being a good fit for me compared to the earlier subjects I mentioned, except for mathematics)
- An undergraduate in mathematics, while more versatile, fundamental, and quantitative than economics, is not the best anymore because of the subject’s uncertain future due to AI
- I’m also considering doing a minor in philosophy/other minors for communication because of how in-demand a combination of skills in understanding quantitative topics and communicating clearly actually is
- I think I did a good job of considering the majors and minors based off of this article on what to aim for in a dream job and this one on college advice but it’s tough to decide which subjects I'm considering is the best fit for me
- This is solvable by doing cheap tests, and I expect that all I need to do is cheap test by studying each subject from online courses for a couple of weeks to a month or so
Now here’s the question I have about this:
What do you think about this situation? (What I did good, what I could do better, what I should/shouldn’t do, etc)
I chose my major (computer science) because AI was interesting, I like math and puzzles, and the newgrad salary / mid-career salary stats looks good when I was applying. I recommend choosing major based on similar criteria (industry you find interesting + tasks that are enjoyable + lucrative). If you think that mass job automation is 50% likelihood within 7 years. I would recommend going into CS/ML or else get as far away from automatable jobs as you can (plumber).
I actually did already consider industries I find interesting + tasks that are enjoyable and lucrative from when I said this: