Generation AI Must Invent Its Own Working Life
Conceptual illustration
7 MINUTES READ
Generation Z is already in the workforce.
Generation Alpha is right behind them.
By Mark Sinclair Fleeton
“Then AI arrived.”
Generation Z is already in the workforce. Generation Alpha is right behind them. They want opportunities to grow, financial security and a working life that leaves room for life outside work. But they are entering a labour market where artificial intelligence is transforming jobs, career paths and even the route into working life.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Doctor. Journalist. Engineer. Teacher. Lawyer. Programmer. Generations of children have been asked what they want to be when they grow up. Behind that question lay a fairly stable idea of working life: you train for a profession, get your first job, become more skilled, move up and gradually build a career.
But that story has become less certain. The oldest members of Generation Z are already in the workforce. The youngest are on their way in. Behind them comes Generation Alpha, whose members will begin entering the labour market in greater numbers in the coming years. The two generations stand on opposite sides of a technological shift. Generation Z is finding its place in the workforce just as generative AI is changing it. Generation Alpha is growing up with AI as a natural part of everyday life and will probably never experience working life without the technology.
Yet their ideas about a good working life may not be so radically different from those of previous generations. Perhaps the more interesting question is whether the labour market they are entering can provide the kind of working life they imagine.
Generation Z wants to get ahead – but not necessarily climb the ladder
If you think the youngest people in the workforce have lost their ambition, the surveys paint a different picture. But ambition seems to have changed in character. Deloitte’s global 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey shows that only 25 percent of Gen Z prefer rapid career progression with frequent promotions. Forty-four per cent prefer more gradual development, while 21 per cent are willing to move sideways or even take a step back if it provides experience they can use in the longer term. Only six percent cite reaching a leadership position as their primary career goal.
That does not necessarily mean Generation Z does not want to lead. In fact, three out of four Gen Z respondents in the survey say they could be interested in a senior leadership role at some point. But they are in less of a hurry to get there. Stress, substantial responsibility and the impact on work-life balance are among the main barriers.
This looks less like a rejection of ambition than a rejection of the idea that a successful career must necessarily resemble a ladder.
Work should offer opportunities to learn. It should provide financial security. It should be compatible with a life outside the workplace. And development does not always have to mean a new title on a business card.
The Danish results of Deloitte’s 2025 survey reflect the same picture. Only nine percent of Danish Gen Z respondents cited a leadership position as their primary career goal, while learning and development were among the most important reasons for choosing an employer.
Then AI arrived.
A generation with AI on its desk
For Generation Z, artificial intelligence is no longer primarily something that might affect working life in the future. It is already at work. In Deloitte’s global 2026 survey, 74 percent of Gen Z respondents say they use AI in their daily work to some extent. The previous year, the figure was 57 percent. AI is used, among other things, to learn, identify development opportunities and obtain career advice.
In Denmark, the 2025 survey showed that 53 percent of Gen Z were already using generative AI in their daily work. Among users, 62 per cent said the technology had improved what they produced, and 65 per cent felt it saved time and improved their work-life balance.
AI is often described as the technology that will threaten the younger generation in the labour market. For some young people, it is also a tool that is already making working life easier. That does not mean their concerns have disappeared. In Deloitte’s global 2025 survey, 63 percent of Gen Z feared that generative AI would eliminate jobs. And 61 percent of Gen Z and millennials were concerned that AI would make it harder for future generations to enter the workforce because the technology automates tasks traditionally performed by employees at the beginning of their careers.
The first rung is changing
If learning and development are essential to a good working life, workplaces must offer opportunities to do precisely that. Traditionally, much of this learning has taken place through the relatively simple tasks assigned to new employees. The junior lawyer reviews documents. The newly qualified journalist transcribes interviews and conducts background research. The junior programmer handles smaller coding tasks. The new consultant gathers and processes data. You learn by doing.
But these are precisely some of the tasks that generative AI is good at performing.
Deloitte describes this as a growing “experience gap”: companies demand experience at the same time as some of the roles in which young people have traditionally gained that experience are shrinking or changing. More than half of the executives Deloitte surveyed say their own first experience came through internships, apprenticeships, part-time work or entry-level positions – precisely the steps that organisations now need to rethink.
But the trend is not clear-cut here either. Deloitte’s 2026 survey finds both companies that are reducing entry-level positions because of AI and companies that are creating new ones. Among Gen Z respondents, 20 per cent say their organisation is reducing entry-level roles, while 23 per cent of all respondents report that AI is creating new entry-level roles. At the same time, faster learning and the opportunity to work on higher-value tasks earlier are among the most frequently cited positive consequences.
And then comes Generation Alpha
While Generation Z can already describe how AI affects its working life, the situation is different for Generation Alpha. They are still children and teenagers. There is therefore far less reliable evidence about how they will behave as employees. And caution is needed here. Generations are not personality types, and 12-year-olds can hardly be expected to explain how they will prioritize pensions, working conditions and careers at the age of 35. But we can ask what they imagine. And something remarkable emerges.
Their dreams are not necessarily as futuristic as the technology around them might lead us to believe.
In its 2025 report Gen Alpha Unfiltered, GWI surveyed more than 20,000 children aged eight to 15 in its international Generation Alpha study. The section on career aspirations includes 11,452 children aged 12 to 15 across 18 markets. The survey shows continued interest in familiar professions in areas such as healthcare, law, teaching, science and engineering, alongside digital and creative career paths such as content creation.
In other words, Generation Alpha does not necessarily dream of becoming prompt engineers or AI agent designers. They still dream of professions we recognize. But those professions will not necessarily be the same by the time they enter them.
They want to be doctors – but what will doctors do?
Perhaps this is where the difference between Generation Z and Generation Alpha becomes interesting.
A 14-year-old can easily dream of becoming a doctor. But when she finishes her training, perhaps 15 years from now, AI may perform a far greater share of diagnosis, documentation and information processing than it does today. She will still be able to be a doctor. But being a doctor may increasingly be about judgement, responsibility, communication and the relationship with the patient.
The same applies to lawyers, programmers, journalists, engineers and teachers. We may therefore be making a mistake when we try to predict the future labour market by asking which professions will exist. Perhaps we should focus instead on which parts of those professions will remain human responsibilities. A job consists of tasks. And AI can take over some of them without taking over the entire profession. That also means Generation Alpha may end up in the jobs they dream of – but perform them in ways we would struggle to recognize today.
Generation AI
Generation Z learned to write school assignments, apply for jobs and begin their careers in a world where generative AI suddenly appeared. Generation Alpha is growing up with it from the start. The two generations are different, and the labels themselves conceal enormous differences between individuals, countries and social groups. But when it comes to working life, they share a new fundamental condition: they must build their working lives in a world where AI is no longer a new technology but part of the infrastructure surrounding work.
We could call them Generation AI.
Not as another precise generational category alongside Generation Z and Alpha, but as a term for the young people who must learn a profession, gain their first experience and build a working life while the boundary between what humans do and what machines can do keeps shifting.
For Generation Z, the transition is already under way. They experience AI as both a tool and a potential competitor. For Generation Alpha, the question may be even more fundamental. They will not first learn how to work and then learn how to work with AI. They will have to learn both at the same time.
Generation AI still wants a good working life
Generation AI is not necessarily a generation with radically new expectations of work.
Quite the opposite. Looking at the surveys of Generation Z and the first studies of Generation Alpha, it is easy to recognize some fairly basic aspirations. Young people want to be able to support themselves. They want to develop. They want work they find meaningful. They want a degree of security. And they want room for a life outside work. So perhaps what is new is not what they want, but the conditions under which they must try to achieve it.
There is a temptation to keep describing new generations as radically different from those that came before. Baby boomers were like this. Millennials were like that. Generation Z wants something else entirely. And now Generation Alpha is coming. But perhaps the differences are less interesting than the similarities.
Looking at the surveys, it is easy to recognize some fairly basic aspirations. Young people want to be able to support themselves. They want to develop. They want work they find meaningful. They want a degree of security. And they want room for a life outside work.
Deloitte’s global surveys sum up Generation Z’s priorities as a combination of finances, purpose and wellbeing. The 2026 survey also shows a preference for more gradual and sustainable career development rather than constant acceleration.
These are not particularly revolutionary aspirations. What may be revolutionary is the labour market expected to fulfill them.
They want precisely what AI may challenge
Compare young people’s expectations with the developments described in the rest of this themed issue, and a series of contradictions emerges. They want to learn and develop. But some of the simple tasks through which beginners have traditionally learned their professions can be automated.
They want financial security. But skills and job functions may change more rapidly.
They want autonomy and meaning. At the same time, AI and algorithmic management make it possible to measure, allocate and control work in far greater detail.
They want work-life balance. AI can free up time, but the same productivity gains can just as easily be translated into higher output demands. And they want careers in which they can develop. But the traditional career ladder from junior to senior may become less straightforward. The future working lives of Generations Z and Alpha are therefore not just about how good they become at using AI. They are at least as much about how we choose to organize work around the technology.
Perhaps we are asking the wrong question
That brings us back to the question at the beginning: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Perhaps it is increasingly the wrong question. Not because doctors, teachers, electricians, programmers or journalists will necessarily disappear, but because a job title tells us less and less about what a person will actually do over a working life spanning 40 or 50 years.
Generation Alpha may change roles, specialisations and perhaps professions several times. Periods of work may be interrupted by periods of further education and training. AI may take over some tasks and create others. And professional expertise may increasingly become something developed throughout working life.
So perhaps we should ask children and young people a different question: How would you like to work when you grow up? Do you want to work with people? Create something? Solve problems? Have a lot of responsibility? Do physical work? Have freedom? Earn a lot of money? Have time for your family? Work alongside AI? Do something you believe matters?
Generation Z is already taking part in the experiment. Generation Alpha comes next.
Together they make up what we have called Generation AI: the first generations that must build all or large parts of their working lives with artificial intelligence as a fundamental condition. They must do more than figure out what they want to be. They must help figure out what work itself should be when machines can perform an ever-growing share of the tasks we have so far called work. Perhaps, then, it is not Generation AI that must adapt its dreams to the labour market of the future.
Perhaps Generation AI must help invent its own working life.
About the author
Is a Danish journalist, author and editor-in-chief of AI Portalen and co-founder of FutureAble. He works with artificial intelligence, technology and society with a particular focus on, among other things, the labor market, democracy, digital sovereignty, regulation and AI skills. He also teaches and gives lectures on AI and society.
