In this short monologue, AJ Hoge warns that artificial intelligence poses the greatest immediate threat to jobs, careers, and financial security, especially for desk‑based roles. He stresses that passive attitudes—waiting, fearing, or hoping—won’t help; instead, individuals must aggressively learn AI and related skills, become flexible, and be ready to pivot to new industries. Hoge illustrates his point with his own career path, having moved from social work to English teaching to entrepreneurship, emphasizing that modern technology forces frequent career changes. He predicts that hundreds of millions to a billion jobs could be lost within five years, urging listeners to change faster than the world does and adopt a proactive, “data‑fitness” mindset.
Chapters
I think this is the biggest topic, the biggest risk for most of us. The biggest topic in the area, in the areas of jobs, career, financial safety and security. It's happening right now, Right now. Something that is happening right now and over the next, let's say, five years. So the way to deal with this is not to run away from it, not to just hope things will be okay, not to be afraid, because none of those will help you. What we've got to do is learn more. And I'm starting to dive in a lot now into AI and just playing around with it just because I want to understand it so I can help you. And this is a topic that connects very directly to business English. A lot of you learn English for business and career, job, money, reasons, motivations. So I'm diving more into AI, you know, learning other skills and planning or jumping to a different industry, different career. You know, we have to do this. I did this in my own life. You know, I did this. I used to be a social worker, then I became an English teacher, Then I became a, a business owner and an entrepreneur. So even myself, that's three. And then before that, I worked all kinds of different jobs. So this is just part of life. You know, things change so fast now, technology, that you cannot just plan to have one career your whole life. You're probably going to make, have to make some big changes. Now is the time to, you know, aggressively learn new skills, try new things, become flexible, take chances. Okay? Don't just sit and hope for the best, because I think that's a terrible strategy. I think people who do that are the most in danger because there are going to be, you know, hundreds of millions, possibly a billion jobs lost and big, big changes. So when things are changing and things like this, you've got to change faster than the world's changing. This is the mindset to have. Okay? Data Fitness says, in my opinion, if you're earning money while sitting down, so like working in a desk or an office, artificial intelligence is dangerous for you. There's a ton of, there are a ton of jobs that are at risk.
