Want job security in the age of AI? Get a state license – any state license
When I was in college and didn’t know what to do with my life, my dad offered this career advice: be a certified public accountant.Why?“Because,” he said.“People will always need their taxes done.They’ll always need financial advice.With a CPA license, you can always hang out a shingle and put food on the table.
”It was good advice, and it’s still relevant today,So relevant, it’s the same advice I gave to my kids when they reached the same age and were equally unsure about their futures,They don’t have to become CPAs (one did),But they should become professionals licensed by the state,It’s the best job security ever.
State licensing boards have come under scrutiny this year,A Cato Institute report accuses these boards of over-extending their power and there are initiatives this year to curtail their power,Some of these arguments are not without merit,And I’m sure the system can be refined in various ways,In the meantime, my advice remains the same: get a license.
Despite arguments against, state licensing is a powerful job protector.Become a licensed beautician, pharmacist, engineer, cosmetologist, nurse or landscaper.Take advantage of the data-construction boom and get licensed in a construction trade like electrical, plumbing, home improvement, fire inspection.These jobs are never going to be replaced by technology.AI-based tools and robotics will help improve productivity and will certainly be able to do more hazardous tasks.
But they will need to be operated by humans who are licensed professionals,And it’s critical that the license is government-issued, and not some certificate issued by some podunk college or company that’s basically earned by paying a fee,Having a state license means you’ve worked through an educational program and most likely sat for an exam that has validated your competence,For many professions like mine, you’re required to keep up annually with ongoing educational requirements,All of these professions are represented by countless associations, groups and organizations that support their members with education, resources, mentoring, job connections and even healthcare.
Getting a professional license will result in a higher-paid job, certainly more than another applicant without one,It brings credibility,It demonstrates commitment,It doesn’t guarantee you a job, but it serves as a form of reference that you are competent at what you do and disciplined to get a license,In earlier times, professionals needed to pay someone to serve as an apprentice in order to learn a trade.
Now the state provides that service.And in many cases their requirements are even tougher.To receive my CPA license in Pennsylvania, for example, I needed to not only have a college degree, but pass an exam and work in public accounting for two years.This is why some trade schools are reporting more than a 35% increase in enrollment since 2020.It’s why state licenses have increased as much as 30% over the past few decades driven not just by fee revenue but by demands from consumers that they work with someone who’s gone through a vetting process.
Having a state license not only provides you with a leg up to get a job, it also better enables you to start your own business, if you so choose to do,It’s why the Wall Street Journal reports that private-equity firms are turning the lowly contractors into millionaires, as they’ve been scooping up home services like HVAC – that is, heating, ventilation and air conditioning – as well as plumbing and electrical companies,I pity the people who work at companies and aren’t licensed professionals, the customer service agents and software developers and marketing and accounting staff members, many of whom will be replaced by AI in the next few years,Over the next few years, much of the work currently done by many CPAs will be replaced by AI,Software will competently do research, prepare tax returns, analyze financial statements and make financial planning recommendations.
But these are just things that will make the smart people in my profession even smarter.Like any other trade, there is much that we do that a bot will never be able to.We advise.We console.We evaluate.
We communicate.And the best will become expert with many AI tools that our clients will never have the time or the inclination to master.These clients will assume their professionals and advisers are taking advantage of technology to do their jobs, just like we’ll assume that our contractors are using the latest tools to do their work quicker and better.And they’ll be right.The coming tech boom is about to launch a boom in people who do things with their hands and minds.
And becoming licensed by a state will be increasingly valuable.My dad didn’t always get it right.But on this, his opinion remains more relevant than ever.
Elon Musk teams with El Salvador to bring Grok chatbot to public schools
Elon Musk is partnering with the government of El Salvador to bring his artificial intelligence company’s chatbot, Grok, to more than 1 million students across the country, according to a Thursday announcement by xAI. Over the next two years, the plan is to “deploy” the chatbot to more than 5,000 public schools in an “AI-powered education program”.xAI’s Grok is more known for referring to itself as “MechaHitler” and espousing far-right conspiracy theories than it is for public education. Over the past year, the chatbot has spewed various antisemitic content, decried “white genocide” and claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 election.Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, is now entrusting the chatbot to create curricula in classrooms across the country
Disney wants you to AI-generate yourself into your favorite Marvel movie
Users of OpenAI’s video generation app will soon be able to see their own faces alongside characters from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and Disney’s animated films, according to a joint announcement from the startup and Disney on Thursday. Perhaps you, Lightning McQueen and Iron Man are all dancing together in the Mos Eisley Cantina.Sora is an app made by OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, which allows users to generate videos of up to 20 seconds through short text prompts. The startup previously attempted to steer Sora’s output away from unlicensed copyrighted material, though with little success, which prompted threats of lawsuits by rights holders.Disney announced that it would invest $1bn in OpenAI and, under a three-year deal perhaps worth even more than that large sum, that it would license about 200 of its iconic characters – from R2-D2 to Stitch – for users to play with in OpenAI’s video generation app
Musk calls Doge only ‘somewhat successful’ and says he would not do it again
Elon Musk has said the aggressive federal job-cutting program he headed early in Donald Trump’s second term, known as the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), was only “a little bit successful” and he would not lead the project again.Musk said he wouldn’t want to repeat the exercise, talking on the podcast hosted by Katie Miller, a rightwing personality with a rising profile who was a Doge adviser and who is married to Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration deputy chief of staff.Asked whether Doge had achieved what he’d hoped, Musk said: “We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful.”Doge created chaos and distress in the government machine in Washington DC, and by May more than 200,000 federal workers had been laid off and roughly 75,000 had accepted buyouts as a result of purges by Musk’s external team of often-young zealots
ICE is using smartwatches to track pregnant women, even during labor: ‘She was so afraid they would take her baby’
Pregnant immigrants in ICE monitoring programs are avoiding care, fearing detention during labor and deliveryIn early September, a woman, nine months pregnant, walked into the emergency obstetrics unit of a Colorado hospital. Though the labor and delivery staff caring for her expected her to have a smooth delivery, her case presented complications almost immediately.The woman, who was born in central Asia, checked into the hospital with a smartwatch on her wrist, said two hospital workers who cared for her during her labor, and whom the Guardian is not identifying to avoid exposing their hospital or patients to retaliation.The device was not an ordinary smartwatch made by Apple or Samsung, but a special type that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had mandated the woman wear at all times, allowing the agency to track her. The device was beeping when she entered the hospital, indicating she needed to charge it, and she worried that if the battery died, ICE agents would think she was trying to disappear, the hospital workers recalled
From ‘glacier aesthetic’ to ‘poetcore’: Pinterest predicts the visual trends of 2026 based on its search data
Next year, we’ll mostly be indulging in maximalist circus decor, working on our poetcore, hunting for the ethereal or eating cabbage in a bid for “individuality and self-preservation”, according to Pinterest.The organisation’s predictions for Australian trends in 2026 have landed, which – according to the platform used by interior decorators, fashion lovers and creatives of all stripes – includes 1980s, aliens, vampires and “forest magic”.Among the Pinterest 2026 trends report’s top 21 themes are “Afrohemian” decor (searches for the term are on the rise by baby boomers and Gen X); “glitchy glam” (asymmetric haircuts and mismatching nails); and “cool blue” (drinks, wedding dresses and makeup with a “glacier aesthetic”).Pinterest compared English-language search data from September 2024 to August 2025 with those of the year before and claims it has an 88% accuracy rate. More than 9 million Australians use Pinterest each month
UK police forces lobbied to use biased facial recognition technology
Police forces successfully lobbied to use a facial recognition system known to be biased against women, young people, and members of ethnic minority groups, after complaining that another version produced fewer potential suspects.UK forces use the police national database (PND) to conduct retrospective facial recognition searches, whereby a “probe image” of a suspect is compared to a database of more than 19 million custody photos for potential matches.The Home Office admitted last week that the technology was biased, after a review by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found it misidentified Black and Asian people and women at significantly higher rates than white men, and said it “had acted on the findings”.Documents seen by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates reveal that the bias has been known about for more than a year – and that police forces argued to overturn an initial decision designed to address it.Police bosses were told the system was biased in September 2024, after a Home Office-commissioned review by the NPL found the system was more likely to suggest incorrect matches for probe images depicting women, Black people, and those aged 40 and under
People pulling own teeth due to lack of urgent NHS dental care in England, watchdog finds
Hospitals in England ‘face dangerous winter overcrowding due to discharge delays’
Wes Streeting is right to examine questions of overdiagnosis | Letters
NHS administrators are vital to patients | Letters
Public should heed new rules on single-sex spaces, says Britain’s equalities chief
DWP needs overhaul to restore trust after carer’s allowance scandal, adviser says