Workers across industries, from Gen Z to baby boomers, are scrambling to future-proof their careers as artificial intelligence threatens to upend the labor market. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has offered a starkly simple assessment of who will come out ahead: people with hands-on vocational skills, and people whose minds work differently from the norm.

“There are basically two ways to know you have a future,” the 59-year-old billionaire said on TBPN, a technology news network, in March. “One, you have some vocational training. Or two, you’re neurodivergent.”

Karp’s first category reflects a growing consensus. Skilled trades professionals, from electricians to plumbers, are difficult to automate and increasingly in demand as Big Tech companies build out massive data centers and the United States continues to grapple with persistent labor shortages.

The second category is more personal. Karp has long spoken openly about living with dyslexia, a learning disability that can affect reading, writing, and information processing. More broadly, neurodivergence can include conditions such as ADHD and autism.

In Karp’s view, that cognitive difference can be an advantage in an AI-driven world—less because of the diagnosis itself and more because of the mindset it can foster. Success, he argued, will favor people who think differently and take risks, or in his words, be “more of an artist, look at things from a different direction, be able to build something unique.”

The idea is also gaining institutional traction. According to a Gartner study, one-fifth of sales organizations within Fortune 500 companies are expected to actively recruit neurodivergent talent to improve business performance by 2027. Corporate neurodiversity hiring is not merely theoretical: large employers including SAP, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase have run dedicated neurodiversity hiring programs in recent years.

Palantir bets on neurodivergent talent and high school graduates

Palantir, the data analytics software company Karp co-founded in 2003, builds software used by government agencies and commercial businesses. While being neurodivergent is not a requirement to land a job there, the company has made clear that it views such candidates as a strategic advantage. It runs a dedicated Neurodivergent Fellowship aimed at recruiting talent that may think differently from traditional hires.

“Neurodivergent individuals will play a disproportionate role in shaping the future of America and the West,” the job posting stated. “They see past performative ideologies and perceive beauty in the world that still exists—which technology and art can expose.”

The emphasis reflects Karp’s broader skepticism of conventional career pathways. Despite holding three degrees to his name—including a JD from Stanford and a PhD in philosophy from Germany’s Goethe University—Karp has been blunt about the limits of higher education in an AI-driven economy.

“[AI] will destroy humanities jobs,” Karp said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in early 2026. “You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy—I’ll use myself as an example—hopefully, you have some other skill, that one is going to be hard to market.”

Palantir has also launched a separate program, the Meritocracy Fellowship, designed specifically for high school graduates not enrolled in college—one of the most prominent degree-optional hiring pipelines in the technology industry. The program’s first cohort required Ivy League-level test scores to qualify and attracted more than 500 applicants. The 22 admitted students were a mix of those who felt attending college wasn’t compelling and those who didn’t get into their dream schools, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The fellowship’s fall 2026 cohort offered participants a monthly stipend of $5,400 and pitched itself with a clear message: “Skip the debt. Reclaim years of your life. Earn the Palantir degree.” Top performers can even receive full-time offers at the company.

Entry-level roles for Gen Z are drying up—but not everyone has given up on college

As traditional entry-level roles dry up for Gen Z graduates, many young people are coming to the same conclusion as Karp: a college degree alone is no longer a guaranteed path to career success.

Still, some technology leaders argue that higher education is far from obsolete—and that the liberal arts in particular may grow more valuable in the age of AI. Jaime Teevan, Microsoft’s chief scientist, believes the next generation will benefit from studying disciplines that emphasize how to think, not just what to do.

“Metacognitive skills will be very important—flexibility, adaptability, experimentation, thinking critically, being able to challenge things. Developing critical-thinking skills requires friction, doing things that are hard, doing deep thinking,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “For that, a traditional liberal-arts education is really important.”

In direct contrast to Karp, Daniela Amodei, cofounder of AI firm Anthropic, said studying the humanities will be “more important than ever.”

“The things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important,” she told ABC News in February. “And what I mean by that is when we look to hire people at Anthropic today, we look for people who are great communicators who have excellent EQ and people skills, who are kind and compassionate and curious and want to help other people.”

The split among AI executives underscores how unsettled the question remains. Gartner’s 2027 recruiting projection and the outcomes of Palantir’s fellowship cohorts now give both sides concrete timelines against which their arguments will be tested.

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune on March 24, 2026.