Look for jobs in NLP. There's a lot of interesting work to be done there. NLP for medical text s, NLP for intelligence encounter intelligence, NLP for lie detection. It's the space for your most likely to find work that is good
He could also have jobs working on corporate chatbots...
I think NLP has as many meaningful jobs as other industries, but it's not at the top of the list.
NLP on medical texts for instance is a very lucrative space that has enormous value to end users and society
NLP for interpretation and foreign policy as well
NLP for legal discovery
NLP for education
These are all spaces where you are ability to contribute meaningfully is very high, and the training time is surprisingly low for utilities. Theory it becomes very high, fundamentals it becomes very high training times
In any sub industry you'll still have to avoid corporate chatbots or their equivalents