Asking for a friend … which jobs are safe from AI?

By Sally Helm,

Amanda Aronczyk, Marianne McCune, Eric Mennel

Published September 10, 2025 at 9:52 AM EDT

There's one question we seem to be hearing everywhere: "Is my job safe from AI?"

Dozens of you, our listeners, have written to us about this. Saying things like, "Maybe my yoga teacher side gig is actually my safest bet now," and "My parents were in real estate, and I never thought I'd say it ... but maybe that's what I should do?"

If only there were a list that could tell you which jobs are safe from AI. We go looking for that list…and find that the AI future is going to be even weirder than we'd imagined.

Today on the show: We talk to two researchers who have come up with some first drafts of the future. We learned more about the machines that might be coming for our jobs, and also, more about what it actually means to be human.

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Today's episode was produced by Eric Mennel and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Sally Helm

Sally Helm reports and produces for Planet Money. She has covered wildfire investigation in California, Islamic Finance in Michigan, the mystery of declining productivity growth, and holograms. Helm is a graduate of the Transom Story Workshop and of Yale University. Before coming to work at NPR, she helped start an after-school creative writing program in Sitka, Alaska. She is originally from Los Angeles, California.

Amanda Aronczyk

Amanda Aronczyk (she/her) is a co-host and reporter for Planet Money, NPR's award-winning podcast that finds creative, entertaining ways to make sense of the big, complicated forces that move our economy. She joined the team in October 2019.

See stories by Amanda Aronczyk

Marianne McCune

Marianne McCune is a reporter and producer for Embedded: Buffalo Extreme who has more than two decades of experience making award-winning audio stories. She has produced narrative podcast series for New York Magazine (Cover Story), helped start, produce and edit long-form narrative shows for NPR and public radio affiliates (Rough Translation; United States of Anxiety, Season Four), reported locally and internationally (NPR News, NPR's Planet Money and WNYC News) and produced groundbreaking narrative audio tours (SF MOMA, Detour). She is also the founder of Radio Rookies, a narrative youth radio series, that is still thriving at WNYC.

Eric Mennel