Anthropic researcher to PhD students: your career plan no longer exists—use AI daily, pick compute-scaling projects
jordiponsdotme · x · 2026-10-19
An Anthropic researcher told a room of PhD students (in a talk titled "The End of the Anthropocene") that the old academic career playbook is gone. His three pieces of advice:
- Use AI every day—if you're on the exponential, you'll never fall behind it.
- Choose projects that get better as compute scales; the rest will be solved before you finish them.
- Stop planning your career as if it were stable—the safe option no longer buys safety.
His summary: "Writing is thinking. If you outsource your writing, you outsource your thinking."
Related event: Anthropic Researcher Tells PhD Students Their Career Plans No Longer Exist(4 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- AI agents are erasing work-life boundaries: managing agents on commutes, vacations and at 3am — bendee983 · 2026-10-21
- a16z: Superhuman AI hardware design is the easy part — manufacturing is the hard one — a16z · 2026-10-21
- a16z's Casado says AI can't do a VC's job — but it can do everything around it — alvelda · 2026-10-21
- Kent Beck: Let the Genie Carry the Toil, But Keep the Struggle — josh_wills · 2026-10-21
- Nearly $3B mapped: the money behind the AI existential risk ecosystem — KeyNaive2982 · 2026-10-21
- Three reasons AI is not conscious and may never be, per Nature essay — anilkseth · 2026-10-21