How should I respond to enrolled agent (EA) exam candidates who feel discouraged that AI will make their future work obsolete?

One approach is to reframe why someone is pursuing the EA credential in the first place. The EA designation is federally recognized (not state-by-state like the CPA), lets you focus solely on tax rather than audit/managerial topics, and gives you the right to represent taxpayers before the IRS, including in resolution work. The group's view was that the underlying knowledge gained while studying for the exam remains valuable even if AI can execute much of the work, because someone still needs to oversee, validate, and understand what the AI produces. The EA is described as a stepping stone, and AI doesn't change that. There was also a point that clients still want to sit down with someone who knows what they're doing, especially for representation and planning, not just get advice from a search engine or AI. One participant added that foundational technical training, like manually learning how numbers flow through a tax return (citing INIT's advisor academy tax prep courses as helpful for this), is becoming a 'lost art' and is more important than ever precisely because AI tools can otherwise obscure that understanding. The overall message for discouraged candidates: the credential still opens doors, still builds foundational skills that AI won't replace, and having that background makes it easier to responsibly use AI tools rather than blindly trust them.