[amradio1989]

You know the answer. The best way to prepare for any job market is to meet the demand. The demand right now is for AI knowledge and skills. There's no way around it if you want to be employed in a well-paying job with benefits and paid time off.

If that's not important to you, you can do whatever you want. Build systems, do contract work, join a small dev shop that shares your values, work on open source projects, etc. You don't have to touch AI if you don't want to.

There's more risk in that second option, and probably a lot less money (though not necessarily) but you'll be happier.