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Parikh quit her job as a senior director of GenAI at Meta in 2024.Courtesy of YutoriDevi Parikh is a former senior director of generative AI at Meta, and the co-CEO of an AI startup.She has a Ph.D., but said you don't need one to do cutting-edge AI work.Seeing ideas through to the end has been instrumental to her success in the industry, she said.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 41-year-old Devi Parikh, who lives in San Francisco. The following has been edited for length and clarity.The seed of my passion for AI was planted in the early 2000s when I studied electrical and computer engineering at college. I was exposed to a type of machine learning called pattern recognition.In 2009, I completed a Ph.D. in computer vision at Carnegie Mellon — well before the current excitement around LLMs and generative AI. But we had the same goal: make machines more intelligent.Next, I moved into research and teaching roles, and in 2016, I spent a year as a research scientist at Facebook AI Research, or FAIR. Following that, I'd spend my springs and summers at FAIR in Menlo Park, California, and my falls teaching computer vision at Georgia Tech.Over time, I enjoyed Meta more than my professorship, and I transitioned to a full-time role in 2021, eventually becoming a senior director of GenAI.In 2024, I left Meta to start an AI company called Yutori, alongside my husband and our friend.Here's what I've learned about getting into and succeeding in AI after over 15 years in the industry.1) Don't assume you need a Ph.D. to do cutting-edge AI workProfessor and research scientist roles in AI might list a Ph.D. as a requirement, but there are other cutting-edge jobs in this space.There are good reasons to do a Ph.D, like if you want to work in academia or explore certain ideas. But if your end goal is doing interesting AI work and learning how the sausage is made, you could spend those five to six years at startups or big labs instead.You can also try side projects, making use of open source code and online communities to get your hands dirty.If you keep putting in the time and effort to whatever you're doing, you'll be able to stand out, and you'll also have learned a bunch of skills along the way.I think the perception that a Ph.D is necessary in this industry has changed over time. We don't take them into consideration much when hiring at Yutori, where we're trying to build AI agents that can help people with digital chores, like looking for apartments or buying headphones.The co-founders of Yutori (From left to right: Abhishek Das, Devi Parikh, and Dhruv Batra)Courtesy of YutoriInstead, we look for people with relevant experience, such as in training models, and how candidates perform in technical interviews involving coding problems and system design questions.2) Keep your professional identity flexibleBetween 2011 and 2013, there was a "deep learning wave," when the AI community began to realize the effectiveness of deep neural networks.Some fellow researchers tied their identity to the tools they had worked with and were hesitant to transition to deep models, even though it was clear they worked much better for the problems we were addressing.This field evolves rapidly, and if evidence tells you new tools work better, don't hold onto your past tool set. Holding on to your professional identity, such as by seeing yourself only as an academic, can also be detrimental.I also learned not to hold on to research areas. I worked on computer vision during my Ph.D, then multimodal problems, and later generative models for images and videos. At the time, I didn't know ChatGPT was coming, and that generative AI would suddenly become a high priority in tech. If I'd held onto my identity as a computer vision researcher without exploring these other things, I would've missed out on opportunities.3) Pursue your genuine interests, not what you think you should doOn…

KucherAV/Getty ImagesIn five years' time, our jobs will look different because of AI.The consulting firm EY has given its employees an AI tool to help them anticipate what will change.I wondered if ChatGPT or Gemini could do the same for me as a reporter.A leader at the Big Four firm EY recently told me that the firm has introduced an AI tool to help their employees navigate the uncertainty around jobs that the new technology is creating.It's part of an internal training program known as AI Now 2.0, which prompts EY employees to answer a series of questions about their job, day-to-day responsibilities, and overall deliverables.They upload the answers to EYQ, the firm's internal ChatGPT-like tool, and it generates an analysis of how their current role might change because of the impact of AI. The goal is to help them identify the skills, knowledge, and abilities they might need in the future.Most industries are facing AI-triggered upheaval, but professional services firms are in a particularly tight spot.Consultants are the experts that other businesses turn to for advice, meaning the pressure is on to make AI work internally. While it presents opportunities, AI is also forcing firms to reconsider long-held pricing models, talent structures, and the services they offer.Newsrooms are just as exposed to AI's unpredictability and opportunity.Inspired by EY, I wanted to see if AI could predict how my job as a reporter will change over the next five years.My promptsI told both chatbots to act like "an organizational strategist," programming them to respond like someone who has done expert research on the possible impact that AI will have on my job rather than provide chatty advice.I described myself as a "reporter for Business Insider" who covers the Big Four professional services firms and workplace culture, and listed some of my key job responsibilities.Then I asked for a future role analysis, asking the chatbots to highlight only the most significant changes.ChatGPTChatGPT predicted that AI will increasingly take on tasks like structural drafting, information-gathering, and generating background context in stories. It said there will be a suite of "built-in extras" to support the publishing process in real time, like smart templates and pulling up older coverage immediately.With tools at my disposal to help speed up the reporting process, my edge as a reporter will come from providing "leaked memos, off-the-record sentiment, organizational politics, and nuanced interpretations that AI cannot surface on its own," according to ChatGPT.A screenshot of ChatGPTs response to my prompt.Polly Thompson/ ChatGPTI pushed ChatGPT a bit more, asking what new knowledge and skills I'd need to succeed as AI changes my industry, and how I could mitigate some of the key ethical and legal risks.It told me to develop AI fluency by learning to prompt effectively, evaluate AI outputs critically, and use analytics to flag stories earlier.On ethics, the big takeaway was essentially: don't trust AI outputs, and you'll be fine — a reassuring conclusion that also neatly undermined my entire experiment.But ChatGPT had a message of encouragement: If I follow its upskilling guidelines and evolve with the tools, then my future job will not be threatened by AI."Your role sits at the intersection of access + judgment + context — areas where AI consistently falls short," the tool told me.GeminiGemini's response to my initial prompt was more impressive, if a little overwhelming.The tool produced a 3400-word strategy document for me titled "The Alogorithmic Nexus: A Future Role Analysis for the Business Insider Big Four Reporter in the era of Generative AI."Perhaps the deep analysis should have been unsurprising given that Google launched the latest update to its AI model, Gemini 3, this month to rave reviews.Gemini said that AI's "primary impact" will be…

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