Jeff Dean, Google's AI lead, said it's possible AI will be at the level of a junior coder in a year or so.
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Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google, said it will soon be possible for AI to match the skills of a junior engineer.
He estimated it could happen within the next year during the "AI Ascent" event.
AI will have to know more than basic programming to truly be at the level of a junior programmer, he added.
Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist, thinks that AI will soon be able to replicate the skills of a junior software engineer.
"Not that far," he said during Sequoia Capital's "AI Ascent" event, when asked how far AI was from being on par with an entry-level engineer. "I will claim that's probably possible in the next year-ish."
Still, Dean said, AI has more to learn beyond the basics of programming before it can produce work at the level of a human being.
"This hypothetical virtual engineer probably needs a better sense of many more things than just writing code in an IDE," he said. "It needs to know how to run tests, debug performance issues, and all those kinds of things."
As for how he expects it to acquire that knowledge, Dean said that the process won't be entirely unlike that of a person trying to gain the same skills.
"We know how human engineers do those things," he said. "They learn how to use various tools that we have, and can make use of them to accomplish that. And they get that wisdom from more experienced engineers, typically, or reading lots of documentation."
Research and experimentation is key, he added.
"I feel like a junior virtual engineer is going to be pretty good at reading documentation and sort of trying things out in virtual environments," Dean said. "That seems like a way to get better and better at some of these things."
Dean also said the impact "virtual" engineers will likely be significant.
"I don't know how far it will take us, but it seems like it'll take us pretty far," he said.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication.
Two years ago, Zechariah Osburn sat down to fill out the Common Application for college. He dreaded going to school and sitting at a desk all day, but he'd always done well, so an undergraduate degree seemed like a no-brainer. His parents had pushed it, too. But staring down the application at midnight one night during his senior year, Osburn decided to scrap the plan. "I felt like a fraud," he tells me.
He didn't know what kind of career he wanted, and didn't have the money for college. Instead of taking out student loans and spending a few semesters partying and soul-searching, he decided to focus on growing his landscaping side hustle into a full-time business. Now, at 20, he's the owner of Z's Exterior Services, which does lawn care, mulching, power washing, and other landscaping services in northern Virginia. He's hired a handful of full- and part-time employees and has plans to continue expanding. And, he says, he still gets a taste of the college experience when he visits his girlfriend.
It's not that Osburn is passionate about mulching, but he does love running the business, and it's rewarding to make customers happy. "How much work you put in is how much return you're going to get," he says. Studying for hours and pouring tens of thousands of dollars into a degree doesn't always yield the same results, he says, as he hears about people taking on lots of debt and then struggling to find work.
Many Gen Zers are eyeing the ever-rising cost of college tuition, along with roiling uncertainty in many white-collar career fields, and are choosing an alternate path.
Americans are losing faith in the ROI of a college degree. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 36% of respondents had a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the higher education system, dropping from 57% in 2015. A Pew Research study in 2024 found that just 22% of US adults thought that college was worth it if a student had to take out loans to attend. Zoomers are also most likely to feel that getting a degree is a waste of time and money, a 2025 survey from Indeed found. Per Experian, the average Gen Zer has about $23,000 in student debt. That load is starting to feel heavier now that the perks Gen Zers most want — including work-life balance, financial stability, and a path to becoming their own boss — are disappearing from white-collar jobs. Managers are calling workers back to the office and dismantling the career ladder by assigning entry-level tasks to generative AI bots and agents.
A survey from the early career site Handshake found that 62% of college seniors who were familiar with AI tools said they were at least somewhat concerned that rising automation via AI would affect their career prospects, up from 44% in 2023. Once-stable jobs in tech, consulting, recruiting, and law are all at risk of seeing the entry-level tasks increasingly given away to gen AI. Roles for recent college grads "deteriorated noticeably" in early 2025, with their unemployment rate jumping to 5.8%, up from 4.6% a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. President Donald Trump's tariffs are creating uncertainty in the market and discouraging employers from hiring new workers, and white-collar workers are feeling stuck in their roles.
Meanwhile, blue-collar jobs — some of which pay a stable six figures — are starting to look more like an oasis.
The proportion of students at two-year colleges focusing on vocational studies compared to other associate degrees grew from about 15% in 2019 to nearly 20% in 2024, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The fastest-growing jobs in the country, per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, are wind turbine technicians and solar panel installers, followed by roles in healthcare and some in tech, like data analysts or information security analysts. Jobs in construction, plumbing, electrical work, and transportation are all projected to grow faster than the average job-growth rate of 4% from 2023 to 2033.
Social media has really introduced Gen Z to what working in new fields can be like.Jennifer Herrity
The need for workers in renewable energy, commercial and home construction, and public infrastructure is expected to rise, thanks to projects like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and a global investment in new energy sources. Home prices are soaring in part thanks to construction worker shortages, and wages for those workers are up.
And just as demand is increasing, a swath of skilled, baby boomer laborers are getting ready to pack it up and retire. That will open up more gigs for people who want to work in these in-demand, automation-proof roles such as HVAC servicing, plumbing, and construction — and it's unlikely you'll hire a robot to come fiddle with your home's electrical wiring anytime soon. In fact, many analysts predict these fields could experience labor shortages, which is good news for Gen Z.
And where generative AI is stagnating growth in industries like tech or consulting, it's accelerating growth for young people who want to start their own businesses. ChatGPT and its ilk have become always-on assistants that help young entrepreneurs automate work like appointment scheduling and generating emails to customers — and they don't have to be put on payroll. And as the digital-first generation, Gen Z doesn't need school to train them on the kind of tech that can make these businesses more efficient.
"They're very used to working with technology; it's part of their daily life," says Gary Specter, the CEO of Simpro, which makes job and project management software for field service and trade contracting industries."You're seeing a coming together of technology and these hands-on jobs."
For some, a blue-collar pivot would mean abandoning the college dreams laid out by parents, siblings, and countless coming-of-age movies. As America's middle class grew, so did the drive for higher education. In 1970, just 11% of US adults had a bachelor's degree. By 2021, that number had swelled to 38%, according to US Census data. Sending kids to a university became less a privilege and more a given for many middle-class families. But that push ignored other viable career paths and gave rise to a stigma around blue-collar work that persists today, even as rising tuition costs have dampened the appeal of the college dream.
Ryan Daniels, 22, left behind college at the University of Florida after his freshman year in 2022 to pursue his pressure-washing business full time. "It was really shocking to people that I was going to let that opportunity go," he tells me. But he's not alone in that shift. The rate of young people enrolled in college dropped from 41% in 2012 to 39% in 2022, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Enrollment in college peaked in 2010, but has since declined from 18 million students to about 15.4 million in 2021.
Getting young people into the trades will still take a mindset shift. In a 2023 survey of US high schoolers by Jobber, a software for home professionals, 74% said they thought there was a stigma around choosing vocational school instead of a four-year college, and 79% said their parents wanted them to go to college, while only 5% said their parents encouraged vocational school. A Gallup survey found that around 70% of high school students had heard a lot about college, while less than a quarter had heard frequently about apprenticeships and vocational schools. And it may be blue-collar influencers, rather than a vocational school rep at an assembly, who pull more young people into these fields.
"Gen Z really is facing a new set of challenges," says Jennifer Herrity, who follows career trends at Indeed. "Social media has really introduced Gen Z to what working in new fields can be like."
Day-in-the-life videos have flooded YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, giving people a peek into careers that many may not have known about unless a family member worked in them. There are some that show consultants or tech workers shuttling from an early morning at Equinox to their offices and then from meeting to meeting, $9 matcha latte in hand, but the more visually interesting videos come from people doing hands-on work in their fields. There are electricians, plumbers, landscapers, and more who show themselves out in the wild getting their complicated jobs done. Osburn tells me he watched videos on social media about starting his landscape business. Now, he has 45,000 followers watching him on Instagram as he drives his trucks around Virginia . Lexi Abreu, an electrician with 200,000 followers on YouTube, walks viewers through tricky wiring jobs and makes tongue-in-cheek visual gags about working as a woman in a male-dominated profession.
While college kids pinch pennies, those who go into trades can start earning immediately. Average entry-level construction jobs start at around $19 an hour, and rise to $45 at the top level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Maintenance and repair jobs start around $14 an hour but can go as high as $44 an hour. The average electrician and plumber make about $29 an hour, according to Indeed. Instead of surviving on cup noodles for four years, Daniels has built a business, RHI Pressure Washing, and can pay not just his own bills, but those of three employees. Already, people are increasingly seeing the value of working in the trades. In 2024, 66% of adults said they believed there were well-paid, stable jobs available to those with only high school diplomas or GEDs, up from 50% in 2018, a survey of about 1,500 people conducted by the think tank New America found.
The blue-collar perks don't mean college degrees are dying anytime soon. The median pay for a Gen Z college graduate in 2024 was $60,000, based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, compared to $40,000 for a high school graduate. That gap widens as college-educated workers age and advance through their fields. And some of these stable fields are hiring for college grads, too: The fastest-growing industry for new college grads is in construction, LinkedIn says, and entry-level workers are also rising in number in the utility sector and oil, gas, and mining industries.
Daniels would have graduated from college this month, but in that time, he has instead spun out his high school side hustle of pressure washing into a full business. He spends most of his day running the business side. That means using ChatGPT almost daily, whether it's to draft responses to customers or mass emails, Daniels says. Gen AI might "take away from white-collar jobs, and it really helps us out here."
Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said AI is going to "intermediate" key institutions like the courts, schools, and medical systems.
Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said the US needs to open-source AI.
Otherwise, the country risks ceding control to China, the longtime investor said.
The stakes are high as AI is set to "intermediate" key institutions like education, law, and medicine, he said.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has a clear warning: America needs to get serious about open-source AI or risk ceding control to China.
"Just close your eyes," the cofounder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz said in an interview on tech show TBPN published on Saturday. "Imagine two states of the world: One in which the entire world runs on American open-source LLM, and the other is where the entire world, including the US, runs on all Chinese software."
Andreessen's comments come amid an intensifying US-China tech rivalry and a growing debate over open- and closed-source AI.
Open-source models are freely accessible, allowing anyone to study, modify, and build upon them. Closed-source models are tightly controlled by the companies that develop them. Chinese firms have largely favored the open-source route, while US tech giants have taken a more proprietary approach.
Last week, the US issued a warning against the use of US AI chips for Chinese models. It also issued new guidelines banning the use of Huawei's Ascend AI chips globally, citing national security concerns.
"These chips were likely developed or produced in violation of US export controls," the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said in a statement on its website.
As the hardware divide between the US and China deepens, attention is also on software and AI, where control over the underlying models is increasingly seen as a matter of technological sovereignty.
Andreessen said it's "plausible" and "entirely feasible" that open-source AI could become the global standard. Companies would need to "adjust to that if it happens," he said, adding that widespread access to "free" AI would be a "pretty magical result."
Still, for him, the debate isn't just about access. It's about values — and where control lies.
Andreessen said he believes it's important that there's an American open-source champion or a Western open-source large language model.
A country that builds its own models also shapes the values, assumptions, and messaging embedded in them.
"Open weights is great, but the open weights, they're baked, right?" he said. "The training is in the weights, and you can't really undo that."
For Andreessen, the stakes are high. AI is going to "intermediate" key institutions like the courts, schools, and medical systems, which is why it's "really critical," he said.
Andreessen's firm, Andreessen Horowitz, backs Sam Altman's OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI, among other AI companies. The VC did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Open source vs closed source
China has been charging ahead in the open-source AI race.
In January, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released R1, a large language model that rivals ChatGPT's o1 but at a fraction of the cost, the company said.
The open-sourced model raised questions about the billions spent training closed models in the US. Andreessen earlier called it "AI's Sputnik moment."
Major players like OpenAI — long criticized for its closed approach — have started to shift course.
"I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy," Altman said in February.
In March, OpenAI announced that it was preparing to roll out its first open-weight language model with advanced reasoning capabilities since releasing GPT-2 in 2019.
Justin, 31, was seen grinning and bopping his head along to music alongside Hailey, 28, while attending the Sunday, May 18, hockey playoff at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena. The pair even shared a kiss and further PDA via Justin’s Instagram account that evening.
The outing, captured in footage shared via Sportsnet’s Facebook page on Sunday, marked the first public appearance since Justin’s rep hosed down speculation that he was a victim of Diddy, 55. (Diddy is currently on trial for charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.)
A rep shared via a statement to Us Weekly on Thursday, May 15, “Although Justin is not among Sean Combs’ victims, there are individuals who were genuinely harmed by him. Shifting focus away from this reality detracts from the justice these victims rightfully deserve.”
While attending Sunday’s game, which saw Justin’s beloved Toronto Maple Leafs take on the Florida Panthers, Justin threw his arm around Hailey, who also smiled by his side.
The pair thoroughly documented their outing via Instagram, with Justin sharing two Instagram Story videos of Hailey looking excited as she walked down a hall ahead of the match. He also shared Sportsnet’s Instagram Story which mentioned that, “Justin and Hailey Bieber are on the scene for game 7” and included footage of the couple soaking up the atmosphere.
One hour prior to his Stories posts, Justin shared a shot of Hailey walking backstage at the game, captioning his Instagram grid photo, “Made it into the building,” and tagging his wife.
As for Hailey, who married the “What Do You Mean?” artist in September 2018 and shares son, Jack Blues, 7 months, with him, the Rhode founder shared Justin’s grid photo of her back via her own Instagram Stories.
The model also shared a photo of two Maple Leafs players, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, seated in front of her and Justin, demonstrating just how close the couple were to the game’s action.
Justin, who found fame as a teenager, crossed paths with Diddy early in his career, which is where much of the unsubstantiated speculation surrounding Justin’s involvement with Diddy stemmed from.
Justin notoriously appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2011 alongside Diddy, and said the music mogul had promised to buy him a Lamborghini but he had not received this gift. “He knows better than to be talking about the things that he does with Big Brother Puff on national television,” Diddy responded on the show.
Diddy was arrested in September 2024. His attorney Marc Agnifilio said in a statement to Us at the time, “We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He is an imperfect person, but he is not a criminal. To his credit Mr. Combs has been nothing but cooperative with this investigation and he voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges. Please reserve your judgment until you have all the facts. These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
If The Last of Us is going to do anything, it’s hit viewers with an overly emotional penultimate episode.
Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 6 below.
The highly anticipated flashback episode shows a glimpse of how Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and a very much alive Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) spent the last five years in Jackson. But first, the show took viewers even further back to Austin, Texas, in 1983.
A young Joel (Andrew Diaz) comes face to face with his father (Tony Dalton) for an emotional discussion about parenting — which comes into play later on in the episode. Joel’s watch (the one he never took off even though it was broken) is revealed to have originally belonged to his dad.
Flashing forward to 2024, Ellie and Joel have lived in Jackson for two months, and it’s her 15th birthday. Joel gets her a cake and gifts her a guitar that he made. (Yeah, he called her “babygirl” at one point too, but let’s not talk about that.)
The following year, Ellie turns 16 — and their relationship is still very much intact. Joel takes Ellie to “space” by bringing her to an abandoned museum he finds while patrolling the woods.
Things start to change on her 17th birthday, however, with Ellie doing “all the teenage s*** all at once,” including getting a tattoo, doing drugs and hooking up in her bedroom. In the middle of the night, Ellie starts making moves to create a bedroom in the garage and Joel agrees that they need their space.
Liane Hentscher / HBO
“You may not like the rules, but this is my house,” Joel states. Ellie replies, “No, it isn’t. You don’t own it. They gave it to you. Sorry, to us. You don’t own anything.”
The show then jumps two years, which puts viewers in 2028 (the year before Joel dies), and Ellie spends her birthday morning rehearsing a conversation she needs to have with Joel about what really went down in the hospital with the Fireflies when he “saved” her. The conversation never happens because Joel offers Ellie her birthday gift — her first-ever patrol. This is where, for lack of a better term, s*** really starts to go down.
Ellie and Joel are having a peaceful patrol with him teaching her the ropes when they find a Jackson community member, Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), who has been bitten by Infected. Joel promises Ellie that they will take Eugene back to Jackson so he can say goodbye to his wife, Gail (Catherine O’Hara). However, he lies and shoots Eugene dead. Ellie, in a rage, realizes that Joel lied to her about what really happened in the hospital all those years ago.
A nine-month time jump brings viewers back to New Year’s Eve in 2028 — the day before Joel gets murdered. He and Ellie finally have a much-needed conversation.
“You’re such an a******. You lied to me. You looked me in the eyes, and you lied, and it was the same face. Same f***ing look,” Ellie says. “I think I knew already. I knew this whole time. So I’m going to give you one last chance. Tell me what happened with the Firefiles. If you lie to me again, we’re done.”
Joel admitted to killing everyone in the hospital at the end of season 1, telling Ellie that she was the only one immune to the Cordyceps virus and a cure could have been made from her brain — but it would have killed her.
“Then I was supposed to die. That my purpose, my life would have f***ing mattered, but you took that from me! You took that from everyone,” Ellie yells. Joel replies, “Yes, and I’ll pay the price because you’re going to turn away from me.”
Liane Hentscher / HBO
Joel admits that if given a second chance, he wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“Because you’re selfish,” Ellie declares.
Joel responds, “Because I love you in a way you can’t understand. Maybe you never will. But if that day should come, if you should ever have one of your own, well then, I hope you do a little better than me.”
Both Ellie and Joel are sobbing at this point.
“I don’t think I can forgive you for this,” Ellie says. “But I would like to try.”
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