Is AI going to take my grandchild's job?

It's one of the questions I hear most often — not always phrased that directly, but always somewhere underneath the conversation. People aren't just worried about understanding AI. They're worried about what it's going to do to the people they love.

It's a fair question. And it deserves a straight answer rather than false reassurance.

Here's what we actually know.

AI is already changing certain jobs, and it will change more of them. Tasks that are repetitive, predictable, and rule-based — processing forms, answering routine customer service questions, writing standard reports — are exactly the kind of work AI does well. Some of those tasks will be automated, and the jobs built entirely around them will shrink or disappear.

That's real, and it's worth taking seriously.

But the history of technology gives us some useful perspective. When ATMs became widespread in the 1970s and 80s, most people assumed bank tellers would disappear entirely. They didn't. There are more bank tellers in America today than there were before ATMs existed — because ATMs handled the cash transactions, freeing tellers to do more complex customer service work, and because cheaper banking meant more bank branches.

The same pattern has repeated itself with every major technological shift. Some jobs disappear. New ones — often ones nobody predicted — emerge to take their place. The jobs that survive tend to be the ones that require human judgment, creativity, emotional intelligence, and genuine relationships with other people.

Those are exactly the things AI cannot replicate.

So: will AI affect your grandchild's career? Almost certainly, in some ways, yes. Will it take their job? That depends enormously on what the job is — and on their willingness to learn how to work alongside the new tools rather than in spite of them.

The young people who will thrive are the ones who treat AI as a capable assistant rather than a threat. Which, come to think of it, is exactly the approach these books recommend for everyone.

Our series AI for the Rest of Us is written for all ages — including the ones who want to understand what their grandchildren are dealing with.