The New AI Job Categories Nobody Saw Coming
- Jason Padgett
- Sep 26
- 5 min read
Yesterday I was on a check-in call with Madison Benzor and Kimba Rund of Skyepack and something began to crystallize. The media loves to talk about AI taking jobs but have you thought about the new jobs being forged before our eyes?
Phoenix Solutions Group is partnering with Skyepack and Greater Lafayette Commerce to host two AI education programs: a one-day AI in Marketing Skills Bootcamp where students build Custom GPT chatbots for real-world marketing applications, and a nine-week AI in Healthcare Micro-internship focused on creating AI tools for peer recovery coaches and community health workers.
As we've been planning these programs I've been racking my brain for real value adds we could provide the students. It's one thing to position them for today's workforce: it's a whole other challenge to prepare them for the workforce of tomorrow. That said, the ladies and I have been brainstorming how to work in some benchmarking and model evaluation skills.
In recent weeks my sources for continuous AI learning have begun advocating for two very specific job categories: PhD-level RLHF opportunities paying big bucks and custom evaluation specialists focused on business outcomes. For those unfamiliar, RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) is the advanced technique used to train AI systems to align with human preferences and values—think of it as teaching AI to understand nuanced human judgment at scale. I figured it was about time I shared some uplifting news. These are new roles I see emerging from the early days of the age of intelligence.
The Great Divide
I see a distinct bifurcation emerging in the AI application landscape. On one side, we have commercial products like AI chatbots optimized for engagement through social media-style reward functions—designed to please and retain users. On the other side, business applications trained on reward functions derived from custom evaluations, specifically designed to operationalize and scale adherence to key performance indicators (KPIs) and organizational objectives and key results (OKRs) across organizations of every size.
This divide matters because it's creating entirely new value propositions in the job market. The high-value jobs emerging from this landscape predominantly fall on the business-outcomes side of the divide, where human orchestration and judgment become premium skills. However, editorial roles uniquely straddle both sides—equally valuable whether optimizing content for engagement or aligning it with organizational KPIs and brand standards.
My recent conversations with Jason Beutler and Daniel Fuller of RoboSource, who just launched ProcessCoach.ai, perfectly illustrate this trend. Their platform addresses operational complexity through AI-powered process design, task management, and workflow optimization—exactly the kind of business-outcome focused application that requires sophisticated evaluation frameworks.
It's worth noting that AI is also creating entirely new creative roles—you can now produce a feature-length film using AI tools, but you need deep understanding of everything from directing to gaffing and lighting to orchestrate these tools effectively. While these creative-technical hybrid roles represent significant opportunities, they fall outside the scope of this white-collar workforce analysis.
The Education and Skills Renaissance
Question: Will university diplomas retain their value as the leading predictor of white collar job acquisition?
My Prediction: No, but the transition will be sector-specific. Traditional degrees will maintain value in regulated fields (healthcare, law, finance) and research-intensive roles, but will lose their monopoly as the primary hiring filter for most white-collar positions within 5-7 years.
We will see a resurgence of certificate-based institutions like DeVry and Indiana ITT offering high-value certifications:
AI-Human Integration Specialist (change management + AI workflow design + organizational psychology)
Foundation Model Business Analyst (AIaaS evaluation + fine-tuning for specific business outcomes + ROI measurement)
AI Project Manager (leading projects with both human teams and AI agents, including resource allocation and performance metrics)
AI-Augmented HR Strategist (managing hybrid workforces + AI bias mitigation + human-AI team dynamics - may require 2-yr HR degree or equivalent experience as prerequisite)
Context Engineer (data analytics + process mapping + business outcomes matching)
AI Content Strategist (editorial judgment at scale + brand consistency across AI-generated content)
AI Ethics and Compliance Officer (navigating regulatory frameworks + organizational risk management)
Traditional universities will survive by doubling down on distinctly human skills that become more valuable when AI handles the technical heavy lifting:
Healthcare degrees ranging from nursing to social work + AI skills (think BGSU's AI + degree programs)
Disciplines traditionally requiring advanced degrees to create significant value—psychology, philosophy, systems design—will suddenly become high-leverage skills even at a bachelor's level as we navigate AI ethics and human factors engineering
Editorial skills: will experience a similar renaissance. AI will generate content at unprecedented scale and speed. The bottleneck—and the value—shifts to editorial judgment: what to refine, when to publish, how to maintain quality and brand consistency. Taste becomes a quantifiable business asset.
Most AI implementation projects, like any technology deployment, break down to roughly 80% change management and 20% technical execution. The technical piece is becoming commoditized. The human orchestration piece is becoming premium.
Every student at every grade level should be taking some form of AI literacy + data analytics NOW. Please listen when I say this.... you do not have time to ignore the fact that these are foundational literacy for the white-collar workforce going forward, equivalent to computer literacy in the 1990s.
The Evaluation Opportunity
If I were advising a young professional today, I'd point them toward AI project management with a specific focus on systems mapping, contextual data provisioning, and evaluation design. This combination can directly impact ROI in measurable ways.
The projects we're developing with Skyepack demonstrate this perfectly. Our AI in Marketing Skills Bootcamp teaches students to become "editors and orchestrators" of AI tools, while our Healthcare Micro-internship introduces advanced concepts like benchmarking methodologies and reinforcement learning principles to help students understand why business-focused AI must be outcomes-driven rather than sycophantic.
These aren't theoretical exercises. We're aligning with the Presidential AI Challenge for high school students, creating functional solutions that address real community problems while building the evaluation literacy that tomorrow's workforce will require.
This convergence of new role demands is exactly why Phoenix Solutions Group is positioning for fractional CAIO work. Organizations need these capabilities urgently, but most can't justify full-time executive roles for what amounts to strategic architecture and implementation oversight.
The future of AI implementation is about the people who can structure, manage, and continuously refine the entire system so those creative ideas become scalable, measurable, and appropriately calibrated for the specific outcomes each organization actually needs. Learn how to do that and whatever your current role ... it will evolve!
Jason Padgett
Human-AI Collaboration Coach
AGI Podcast Host
AGI - Advance, Grow, and Innovate with AI (Podcast) - Building the future, one human-AI collab at a time.
School’s Out Saturdays on the AGI (Podcast) - The most important conversation with the people shaping tomorrow one lesson at a time.
You can find all of our show links on LinkTr.ee https://linktr.ee/AGIPodcast
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