Google GenAI Founder: Doctors Replaced Soon

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This week we discuss what the top generative AI guy at Google said about agents replacing doctors and lawyers in the coming years. 🙂

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Artificial intelligence continues to spark debate about the future of work and education. One of the pioneers in this field, Jad Tarifi, who led the first generative AI team at Google before founding his own startup, Integral AI, issued a warning to students considering investing years in careers such as medicine or law. According to the expert, the rapid advancement of technology could render these fields obsolete in the near future.

In an interview with Business Insider, Integral AI founder Tarifi warned that rapidly advancing AI could undermine the return on costly, time-intensive graduate education. “No one should pursue a PhD unless they’re obsessed with the field,” he said, arguing that the years invested may carry a steep opportunity cost as AI’s capabilities expand. He singled out medicine and law—paths defined by long training and high tuition—as especially exposed. “In today’s medical system, much of what you learn in college is outdated and driven by memorization,” he added. In his view, pursuing advanced degrees in those disciplines could amount to “wasting several years of your life.”

AI tools are already automating tasks once considered exclusive to highly trained professionals. In law, systems can review contracts and conduct precise legal research; in medicine, algorithms assist with diagnostic imaging, clinical data analysis, and risk prediction. While these technologies still have limits and make errors, Tarifi argues their progress is fast enough to make students rethink long, expensive academic paths.

Tarifi—who holds a PhD in artificial intelligence—extends that skepticism to doctoral study itself. He contends that many frontier problems, including applying AI to robotics, may be largely solved by the time a PhD candidate graduates. In his view, deep specialization still makes sense only in narrowly defined areas—such as AI applied to biology—that remain early in their development.

The former Google executive's advice is to look beyond degrees and focus on human development: "Meditate. Socialize with your friends. Get to know yourself emotionally," he told Business Insider. His words, although critical, put an urgent question at the center of the debate: how to prepare the next generations in a world where technology advances faster than traditional educational models.

With millions of young people making decisions about their academic future, Tarifi's warning raises a new question about the true value of university degrees in the face of the unstoppable advance of artificial intelligence.

Given this scenario, Tarifi offers some guidelines for navigating this new era. He advises caution with generic postgraduate degrees in artificial intelligence and instead suggests specializing in high-value niches, such as the application of AI in biology. This view underscores the importance of hyperspecialization over generalization in the technological field.

I recently put together a 30 minute video on using Copilot Studio to build real-world agents. Have a look. It’s free. Don’t forget, Microsoft now holds 80% of all Fortune 500 data. Where the data lives is where the agents are built. That simple.

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