Ex-Google exec says law and medical degrees are a waste of time because they take so long to complete that AI will catch up by graduation

• Gen Z grads are . But pursuing a doctoral degree to stand out isn’t the answer, warns Jad Tarifi, founder of Google’s first generative-AI team. Students could end up “throwing away” years of their lives because technology is advancing so quickly. This comes as the OpenAI CEO says ChatGPT can already perform on par with PhD-level experts, and Bill Gates admits AI is accelerating at a pace that .

As undergraduate degrees have , young people have turned to advanced schooling to unlock jobs with (or in some cases, a ). However, a former Google leader says Gen Z shouldn’t rush to pursue a PhD, as even doctoral degrees may have lost their edge.

“AI itself is going to be gone by the time you finish a PhD. Even things like applying AI to robotics will be solved by then,” Jad Tarifi, founder of Google’s first generative-AI team, told .

Tarifi himself earned a PhD in AI in 2012, when the subject was far less mainstream. But today, the millennial says, time would be better spent studying a more niche topic tied to AI—like AI for biology—or maybe skipping a degree altogether.

“Higher education as we know it is on the verge of becoming obsolete,” Tarifi said to . “Thriving in the future will come not from collecting credentials but from cultivating unique perspectives, agency, emotional awareness, and strong human bonds.

“I encourage young people to focus on two things: the art of connecting deeply with others, and the inner work of connecting with themselves.”

Tech’s warning for education on the changing AI tide

Even studying to become a or may no longer be worth ambitious Gen Z’s time. Those degrees take so long to complete compared to how fast AI is evolving that students could end up “throwing away” years of their lives, Tarifi added to BI.

“In the current medical system, what you learn in medical school is so outdated and based on memorization,” he said.

Tarifi isn’t alone in thinking higher education isn’t keeping up with the shifting AI tides. In fact, many tech leaders have recently voiced concerns that rising tuition costs paired with an outdated curriculum are creating a perfect storm for an unprepared workforce.

“I’m not sure that college is preparing people for the jobs that they need to have today,” said on Theo Von’s . “I think that there’s a big issue on that, and all the student debt issues are…really big.

“It’s sort of been this taboo thing to say, ‘Maybe not everyone needs to go to college,’ and because there’s a lot of jobs that don’t require that…people are probably coming around to that opinion a little more now than maybe 10 years ago,” Zuckerberg added.

Moreover, the OpenAI CEO says his company’s AI models can already perform at a level equivalent to those with a PhD.

“GPT-5 really feels like talking to a PhD-level expert in any topic,” Altman said. “Something like GPT-5 would be pretty much unimaginable in any other time in history.”

The pipeline from PhD to six-figure job offer remains strong—for now

For existing AI-focused PhD students, the private sector jobs pipeline is still robust. In 2023, roughly 70% of all AI doctoral students took private sector jobs after graduation, a jump from just 20% two decades ago, according to .

However, this increase has some academic that could result from too many experts choosing to work at tech companies instead of staying to teach the next generation as professors.

Henry Hoffmann, chair of the University of Chicago’s department of computer science, he’s seen his PhD students get recruited for decades—but the salary lures have only grown. One student with zero professional experience recently dropped out to accept a “high six-figure” offer from .

“When students can get the kind of job they want [as students], there’s no reason to force them to keep going,” Hoffmann said.

A version of this story originally published on  on August 18, 2025.

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