AI's Impact on Entry-Level Jobs: Challenges and Opportunities for New Graduates

Why companies may soon accelerate replacing jobs with AI

AI adoption across corporate America is expected to only accelerate as more companies turn to automation during an economic slowdown. Hardly a day passes without word that a major company is increasing use of artificial intelligence or a warning that AI will have dramatic impacts -- one day -- on the U.S. workforce. Now, some economists warn that a projected slowdown in the U.S. economy could accelerate the trend. With new reports suggesting that the U.S. economy will probably slow this year, economists and AI experts say more businesses may speed up AI use to cut costs, generate revenue and boost worker productivity. That could lead to more rapid adoption but also downsides, including job losses and consumer harms. "Economic downturns spur you to do more," said Eric So, professor of global economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "There's a lot of focus on what we can do and not enough questions like, 'Should we do that?' and 'Is it being done in a safe way?'" The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated on Tuesday that economic growth in the United States will slow to 1.6 percent this year from 2.8 percent, while inflation is set to rise to 3.9 percent by the end of this year. While trade tensions have cooled somewhat since President Donald Trump announced big tariffs in April, economists worry higher trade barriers and uncertainty will continue to eat into growth, with some predictions of recession in the coming year. While a slowdown could encourage more use of AI, there's also evidence some companies will pull back on heavy technological investments. A wide range of firms are increasingly turning to AI regardless of the economic environment. Wall Street firms from JPMorgan Chase to Morgan Stanley are using AI to help boost sales and update legacy code. E-commerce company Shopify and cloud storage start-up Box are requiring workers to use AI regularly in their work to boost productivity and results. Social media firm Meta plans to automate risk assessment as it relates to the privacy reviews of its products. IBM, which recently announced job cuts, replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with "AI agents" to do repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. It said that over the past four years, AI saved the company 40 percent in its budget. Dario Amodei, CEO of billion-dollar AI start-up Anthropic, received attention last week for suggesting that half of all white-collar entry-level jobs may be eliminated by AI within five years. "Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen," Amodei told Axios. "It sounds crazy, and people just don't believe it." College graduates may already be losing jobs to AI, a report last month from global economic advisory firm Oxford Economics showed. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has risen 1.6 percentage points since mid-2023, nearly triple the increase of the national unemployment rate. "There are signs that entry-level positions are being displaced by artificial intelligence at higher rates," Matthew Martin, Oxford Economics senior economist, wrote in the report, while noting some of the change may be normal. Since the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, companies have been relatively slow in their adoption of generative AI. About 8.7 percent of U.S. companies used AI to produce their products and services in the two weeks between April 21 and May 4, up from 4.8 percent a year earlier, according to the Business Trends and Outlook Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. ChatGPT, meanwhile, has more than 400 million weekly active users. AI's broader use could save companies money but also more quickly expose some of the downsides of the services, especially when they struggle with accuracy or have biases, experts say. That could be especially problematic in fields like medicine, finance, and law, said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp. "When we have tech shifts, you will get things right and wrong," said Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies' use of AI affects the macroeconomy. "As the tech grows up, it goes through a painful stage. We have to get through that to hone the benefits from it." Another impact will probably be job displacement, experts say. So far, companies have mostly touted AI as a tool to aid human workers. But as the tech gets better and budgets get tighter in a slowing economy, companies may be more willing to outsource work to AI, slowing hiring or even cutting jobs, experts say. Klarna, a Swedish fintech company, touted that AI helped it lower vendor expenses, increase internal productivity and better manage operations with fewer employees (the company reduced headcount by 38 percent from 2022 to 2024), according to filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission in March. It has since suggested it went too far in cuts and is hiring more people. "The hope is that AI will be utilized to improve work and productivity and create new work," said Mark Muro, a Brookings fellow who has studied AI and its impacts. "But there's no guarantee." Historically, automation has been one solution for labor cost savings during difficult economic conditions, Muro said. In some cases, investments in automation allow companies to cut costs through headcount reduction. When consumer demand falls companies can take time to make a big technological switch that would've been too disruptive in the regular course of business, Veldkamp said. An AI revolution has the potential to impact a wide range of industries -- from customer service to health care to financial services and beyond because it's able to do tasks like automate data crunching, research and write, which will impact white-collar work. And it comes at a lower cost than some previous technological revolutions like automating a manufacturing facility with machines, Veldkamp said. Microsoft recently found that some companies are considering using AI to reduce headcount in the next year or so, according to a study it conducted. But more of them aim to maintain headcount and retrain their workforce. "You have a class of companies going all in and reinventing themselves with AI," said Colette Stallbaumer, co-founder of Microsoft WorkLab and general manager of Microsoft 365 Copilot. "But you've also got a lot of companies and enterprises still figuring it out. It'll still take time and every company is going to be different." Economic strain may lead some companies to delay AI investments, deeming risks higher than the rewards, said Brett House, economics professor at Columbia Business School. "If there's uncertainty, it's not clear there's a market, or you can't determine the prices of your goods, it puts a huge chill on investing in any tech," he said. "Companies that are cash constrained, have thin margins or a smaller labor component may just pull back on investment to preserve their current business model." Recent earnings reports from two Big Tech companies suggest a slowdown in the economy is spurring them to rethink their aggressive spending. Microsoft, which has been pouring investments into AI, reported that it's spending $1 billion less in capital expenditures from the previous quarter, though that still amounts to $21.4 billion. The company also recently said it is "slowing or pausing" some early-stage data center projects, which are needed to power AI. Amazon Web Services also is reportedly pausing some of data center leasing discussions, particularly international ones, according to a recent note from Wells Fargo analysts citing economic uncertainty. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Big technological shifts like AI take time, many economists say. AI might move faster given how quickly companies can roll it out, but the shift won't be overnight, Veldkamp said. As the technology develops, new jobs will probably also emerge, even ones that aren't yet imaginable, say experts. Five years ago, few would have heard of prompt engineers -- those who specialize in crafting effective prompts for AI bots. But there will be a period where some roles either disappear or decrease in quantity before new jobs are created. Government data may already indicate that computer programmers are feeling the squeeze, Muro said. "This is all new. We haven't gone through a down economy with a technology at this early stage so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out," he said.

Experts offer advice to new college grads on entering the workforce in the age of AI

Alain Sherter is a senior managing editor with CBS News. He covers business, economics, money and workplace issues for CBS MoneyWatch. New college graduates this year face an especially daunting task -- putting their degrees to work just as "generative" artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT is beginning to change the American workplace. "We are entering an entirely new economy, so the knowledge economy that we have been in for the last 50 years or so is on the way out, and a new economy is on the way in," Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn, told CBS MoneyWatch. The impact of AI on Americans recently out of college is already visible across a range of industries and jobs, from technology and finance to media, legal fields and market research. As a result, for the first time unemployment among fresh grads recently surpassed the nation's overall jobless rate -- a shift some experts attribute in part to the creeping influence of AI. "There are signs that entry-level positions are being displaced by artificial intelligence at higher rates than the roles above them," said Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. With the adoption of AI at work only expected to accelerate, we asked three experts across academia, recruitment and consulting for advice on how new college grads should navigate this new normal. Here's what they said. Perhaps most important, young job-seekers start using gen-AI tools -- today. "Almost anybody in that audience, irrespective of the job that they're pursuing, will be expected to use AI with some facility right away," said Joseph Fuller, a professor at Harvard Business School and founder of the Managing the Future of Work project, comparing the task to learning how to use Microsoft Office for a previous generation of grads. To get the ball rolling, experts encourage those who are starting to hunt for work to familiarize themselves with the array of tools at their disposal, such as Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT. That means learning how to engage with such tools beyond simply using them as a search engine. "You want to get in a dialogue with it," Fuller said. "You want to ask it to take different perspectives." Emily Rose McRae, an analyst at research and advisory firm Gartner, said learning how to use AI apps can also be a good way to develop transferable skills. For example, asking AI to summarize documents and then validating its findings to ensure accuracy. Meanwhile, although AI can be helpful when it comes time to filling out job applications, users should proceed with caution given that recruiters can often spot AI-generated language, experts note. Nearly two-thirds of job candidates today use AI at some point in the application process, according to a report from recruitment firm Career Group Companies. "If you're using it to write your cover letter and your resume and you did not review it, everyone can tell," McRae said. Another way to gain potentially valuable experience with AI, while also seeking work, is for interview practice. For example, users can ask the chatbot both to provide sample questions they might face in an interview and then rate the quality of their responses. "If you are using it as a tool to get your own understanding of self in interviews, you're going to start being leaps ahead of everyone else," Raman said. Experts say that as AI surpasses humans in executing certain tasks -- think actuarial math or corporate compliance, for example -- more attention will shift to job candidates' so-called soft skills, such as problem solving and communication. "You cannot outsource your thinking to AI," LinkedIn's Raman said. "You have to continue to hone critical thinking and complex strategy thinking." The focus will be less on your pedigree -- where you went to school or even whether you have a college degree -- he added, and more on what he calls the "5 Cs": curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage and communication. To improve their soft skills, Fuller encourages entry-level job candidates to work on turning what they regard as their biggest weakness into a strength. For instance, if you typically shy away from public speaking or talking in groups, push yourself to get comfortable in those situations. "The inability to do that is going to be penalized more severely in the work of the future than it has been in the past," he said. The Harvard professor also suggested highlighting examples of advanced social skills directly on your resume to help paint a picture for recruiters of how you can contribute to the workplace. Beyond skills development, experts say college grads should be thoughtful about the type of company they choose to work at, knowing that AI could drastically alter the business in the coming years. "The most important thing, if you're a new grad, is where you work -- not what you do at the place you're going to work," Raman told CBS MoneyWatch. He encouraged college graduates to seek out employers that are integrating AI responsibly and with respect for their workforce -- as opposed to embracing it chiefly to replace people. Companies that are adapting to what is a major technological shift in real time will typically offer the best opportunities for learning and growth, Fuller said. In evaluating a prospective employer, young job candidates should try to gain an understanding of how they fit into the company's future. For example, McRae recommends asking hiring managers up front what types of investments the organization is making in its employees and what the room for growth looks like. "What are they telling me they care about? What do career paths look like for this role like now? How do you help people develop the skills they need to become experts?" she said. In researching companies, McRae also encouraged recent college grads to look for places that offer apprenticeship or rotational programs, which can offer ways to quickly ramp up their knowledge base, especially if traditional entry-level roles are in short supply.

AI risks 'broken' career ladder for college graduates, some experts say

Advances of AI chatbots like ChatGPT heighten concern, experts say. Artificial intelligence could upend entry-level work as recent college graduates enter the job market, eliminating many positions at the bottom of the white-collar career ladder or at least reshaping them, some experts told ABC News. Such forecasts follow yearslong advances in AI-fueled chatbots, and declarations from some company executives about the onset of AI automation. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, which created an AI model called Claude, told Axios last week that technology could cut U.S. entry-level jobs by half within five years. When Business Insider laid off 21% of its staff last week, CEO Barbara Ping said the company would go "all in on AI" in an effort to "scale and operate more efficiently." Analysts who spoke to ABC News said AI could replace or reorient entry-level jobs in some white-collar fields targeted by college graduates, such as computer programming and law. Current job woes for this cohort, they added, likely owe in part to economic conditions beyond technology. Many blue-collar and other hands-on jobs will remain largely untouched by AI, they said, noting that tech-savvy young workers may be best positioned to fill new jobs that do incorporate AI. "We're in the flux of dramatic change," said Lynn Wu, a professor of operations, information and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania. "I sympathize with college graduates. In the short run, they may stay with mom and dad for a while. But in the long run, they'll be fine. They're AI natives." Over the early months of 2025, the job market for recent college graduates "deteriorated noticeably," the New York Federal Reserve said in April. It did not provide a reason for the trend. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 5.8%, its highest level since 2021, while the underemployment rate soared above 40%, the New York Fed said. Youth unemployment likely stems from trends in the broader economy rather than AI, Anu Madgavkar, the head of labor market research at the McKinsey Global Institute, told ABC News The softening job market coincides with business uncertainty and gloomy economic forecasts elicited by President Donald Trump's tariff policy. "It's not surprising we're seeing this unemployment for young people," Madgavkar said. "There is a lot of economic uncertainty." Still, entry-level tasks in white collar professions stand at serious risk from AI, analysts said, pointing to the technology's capacity to perform written and computational tasks as opposed to manual work. AI could replace work previously performed by low-level employees, such as legal assistants compiling relevant precedent for a case or computer programmers writing a basic set of code, Madgavkar said. "Is the bleeding edge or the first type of work to be hit a little more skewed toward entry-level, more basic work getting automated right now? That's probably true," Madgavkar said. "You could have fewer people getting a foothold." Speaking bluntly, Wu said: "The biggest problem is that the career ladder is being broken." For the most part, however, Madgavkar said entry-level positions would change rather than disappear. Managers will prize problem-solving and analysis over tasks dependent on sheer effort, she added, noting the required set of skills will likely include a capacity to use AI. "I don't think it means we'll have no demand for entry-level workers or massively less demand," Madgavakar said. "I just think expectations for young people to use these tools will accelerate very quickly." Some jobs and tasks remain largely immune to AI automation, analysts said, pointing to hands-on work such as manual labor and trades, as well as professional roles like doctors and upper management. Isabella Loaiza, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies AI and the workforce, co-authored a study examining the shift in jobs and tasks across the U.S. economy between 2016 and 2024. Rather than dispense with qualities like critical thinking and empathy, workplace technology heightened the need for workers who exhibit those attributes, Loaiza said, citing demand for occupations like early-education teachers, home health aides and therapists. "It is true we're seeing AI having an impact on white-collar work instead of more blue-collar work," Loaiza said. But, she added, "We found that jobs that are very human-intensive are probably more robust."

AI is already wiping out jobs, intensifying a hiring slowdown

An MIT economist warned that the current artificial intelligence boom may only significantly impact 5% of jobs over the next decade. Don't blame a job market slowdown that many economists say will start to become evident in Friday's May employment report solely on uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump's tariffs. You can also point the finger at AI. AI, or artificial intelligence, is increasingly prompting technology companies to hire fewer recent college graduates and lay off more employees, according to economists and staffing firms. The rising U.S. unemployment rate the past couple of years can partly be pinned on a hiring slowdown in technology that has largely affected recent college grads seeking the kind of entry-level jobs being replaced by AI, according to a recent report by Oxford Economics. Trump's tariffs, which are expected to reignite inflation while dampening consumer spending, will likely intensify the hiring pullback, said Oxford Senior Economist Matthew Martin. "Clearly, something is shifting," Martin said. "Entry-level jobs have declined markedly." What is the job market like right now? The Labor Department on Friday is expected to report U.S. employers added 125,000 jobs in May, down from an average of 181,000 the past two months, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The unemployment rate is projected to hold steady at a historically low 4.2%. Job growth has slowed gradually the past couple of years as a post-pandemic burst of demand faded even while companies remain saddled with high labor costs and interest rates, squeezing their profits. Trump's tariffs are generating fresh uncertainty forecasters say will further curtail job growth in coming months. But Martin said there also should be some focus on a deeper shift in hiring patterns that has played out the past couple of years and is gathering force. What is the unemployment rate for recent college graduates? From April 2022 to March 2025, the unemployment rate for recent college grads - aged 22 to 27 - shot up from 3.9% to 5.8% while the jobless rate for all workers climbed from 3.7% to 4%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That means unemployment for recent grads is now higher than it is for all workers, reversing a decadeslong trend. The jobless rate for all college grads - 2.7% in March - is still lower than the overall unemployment rate. But many entry-level tech jobs are disappearing, the Oxford study says. Among industries, professional, scientific and technical services has had the biggest increase in employment among recent grads over the past two decades, largely in computer services. But since 2022, IT employment among those aged 22 to 27 has declined by 8%, compared to a 0.8% rise for college grads older than 27, the Oxford report suggests. Payrolls have risen 2% for college grads in all other occupations. Job openings in professional and business services, the broader sector that includes computer positions, have declined by about 1 million to 1.5 million over the past two years, Labor figures show. The trend is moving the needle on the job market broadly. Since mid-2023, 12% of the rise in the nation's unemployment rate from 3.6% to 4.2% can be traced to the struggles of recent college graduates, according to the Oxford analysis. Are tech jobs still in high demand? Many tech companies, as well as the IT divisions of firms in various industries, are hiring about half the software developers they used to, said Kye Mitchell, head of Experis U.S., the tech hiring arm of staffing giant ManpowerGroup. Instead, AI in many cases is handling basic software development tasks while data architects and scientists, along with AI coaches, are setting up the data and teaching the AI how to manipulate it, Mitchell said. While many developers are being retrained for these higher-level roles, the shift is leading to fewer entry-level jobs in the short term and fewer opportunities for recent graduates. The companies' wary approach toward hiring and desire to increase cost efficiency through AI has been amplified by the uncertainty spawned by the trade war, she said. "People are cautious," she said. "AI is making it tougher for recent college grads." Mitchell advised IT majors to take classes in more analytical specialties to increase their odds of landing a position. "If you're more of a generalist, you're in trouble," she said. Are tech companies doing layoffs? Meanwhile, some large tech companies have laid off workers who performed administrative, customer service and data entry tasks, Mitchell said, replacing them with AI. In May, Microsoft announced 6,000 layoffs globally and company CEO Satya Nadella has said about 30% of the company's code is now written by AI. Other companies, including Google and Salesforce, have announced layoffs at the same time they revealed heavy AI rollouts, according to tech.co, a technology news site. Traditionally, new technology that wipes out some jobs ultimately increases productivity and growth, creating new positions that eventually offset the losses. But, Mitchell said, "People are really unsure... We've never been in this age" of rapid AI advances. By 2030, activities that make up as much as 30 percent of hours currently worked in the U.S. could be automated -- a trend accelerated by AI, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report.

AI versus first jobbers: Here are six tips for bright young students as AI threatens entry-level jobs

AI's rapid advancement threatens entry-level white-collar jobs, potentially disrupting traditional career paths. Experts predict significant displacement in coding, paralegal, and analyst roles, impacting recent graduates. The focus shifts towards human skills, AI literacy, and entrepreneurial ventures as crucial for navigating the evolving job market, emphasizing adaptability and continuous learning.Anthropic.ai founder Dario Amodei has set the cat among the pigeons by predicting that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs within five years. Aneesh Raman, a senior leader in LinkedIn, sees "the bottom rung of the job ladder breaking", with entry-level coding, para-legal and consulting analyst jobs under threat of being "replaced with AI". Molly Kinder of Brookings says, "These tools are so good that I no longer need marketing analysts, finance analysts and research assistants." Even in my tiny company, we have "replaced" a couple of junior researchers with deep research AI agents from OpenAI and Perplexity. This phenomenon of entrylevel jobs being under AI threat is not only anecdotal. Raman sees hard evidence of this on LinkedIn, with 63% of VPs and above agreeing that AI might eventually take on some of the entry-level roles and tasks. The latest US job data reveals that the unemployment rate for college grads has risen by 30%, compared with about 18% for all workers. Layoffs by big tech and consulting firms support this assertion. PwC recently laid off 1,500 US employees, most of them recent hires. Microsoft got rid of about 3% of its workforce, most of them software engineers and project managers. A now-famous memo by the Spotify CEO froze all hiring, insisting that employees must first prove that AI can't do that job before they hire a human being. AI EFFECT IS DIFFERENT Technology has always impacted jobs, destroying many old ones, but also creating new, unexpected ones. The IT wave put old-school clerks and stenographers to pasture, but created millions of software developers and search engine marketers. Manufacturing went through a similar transition. AI, however, is different in the sense that it is a cognitive technology -- one of the brain, rather than of the hand. So, it squarely takes aim at the knowledge worker and the creative artist. What seems different with AI is how it is impacting first jobbers and entry-level workers. This is dangerous, as it is in the formative years that youngsters learn skills and gain experience. Writing basic code and debugging are how they rise to become great software engineers; junior paralegals and associates draft clauses and contracts that prepares them for partner-level tasks; and retail and customer service agents learn the basics before they can rise up the hierarchy. These are, coincidentally, the tasks that AI can do best. Deep Research can do the job of researchers; vibe coding with Cursor AI of entry-level software; while Harvey AI and NotebookLM draft excellent contracts. Thus, curiously, AI seems to be favouring the older people -- with their human qualities of judgement, experience, institutional memory and collaboration, sharpened over years. It is in these human skills that young people need to be groomed. But if entry jobs go away, it will create a massive unemployment and educational crisis, and choke the pipeline of young people who can replace the seniors. So, what do you do, if you are a bright young college student, or the parent of one in this age of AI? Here are six thoughts. Do What You Are Trained For: With our obsession for software and STEM, it was not only computer or software engineering graduates who joined tech firms as software engineers. Legions of mechanical, electronics and even civil engineers did the same. There is a whole world to build out there outside of software. Manufacturing firms desperately need engineers to run their machines, there are bridges to be built, roads to be repaired and data centres to be run. For instance, Google recently announced a $10 million grant, among other things, to train electricians for the power plant and data centre boom that AI has sowed. This huge shortage means electrical engineers in data centre clusters in the US are earning significantly more than software engineers do. Simply put, say hello to the revolutionary idea that mechanical engineers do mechanical engineering. Become AI Literate: The definition of literacy has changed. It was about reading, writing and arithmetic; now it is beyond that to working naturally with AI tools and agents. Young people, including those I teach at Ashoka and other universities, are fast adapting to be AI literate and use AI tools in everything they do, to get a leg up in their job search. At KPMG, recent graduates are reportedly leveraging AI tools and handling tax jobs that used to be done by employees with three-plus years' experience. Big legal firms are encouraging early-career lawyers to work on complex contracts that once senior people did. Build Human Skills: Humans will have to rediscover humanities with subjects of logic, grammar, ethics, philosophy and literature to keep our competitive advantage. With AI agents increasingly handling the technical "how-to" of tasks, the human edge will lie in the "why" and the "what next". The "humble" subjects of humanities like language, philosophy, grammar and the arts are the ones that provide us critical frameworks for understanding context, ethics, human motivation, creativity and critical judgment -- skills that are inherently difficult for AI to replicate meaningfully. As answers become commoditised, questions or prompts become important, and increasingly employers will prefer graduates with a mix of humanities and technical skills. Become Entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurs and SMEs build economies, not large monolithic organisations. More and more first jobbers will choose to become entrepreneurs. The New York Times writes about how at Stanford University, fewer grads are considering tech and finance careers, and more of them are plunging into starting companies -- "on the theory that if humans are about to lose their labor advantages to powerful AI systems, they had better hurry and do something big". Build Portfolio Careers: There is no rule that people must do only one job at a time. As AI rolls in, multiple skills will become much more important. Be a software engineer and a chef; qualify as a designer and run a pet foster home; build websites as well as toys for children. Think of your career not as a linear progression in a single industry, but a portfolio you are juggling. Become an Apprentice: Much before this era, young people entered jobs as apprentices. They would pay a master blacksmith or surgeon to teach them their craft, before setting up a practice of their own. The modern corporate organisation reversed that trend; young people were paid to learn during their initial years. As AI replaces basic skills and reinvents work, there could be a reversal. There could be a future where humans would invest to do our first job, before we claim the right to earn. Bindra is an author and entrepreneur. Views are personal

Parmy Olson: College grads are lab rats in the great AI experiment

Companies are eliminating the grunt work that used to train young professionals - and they don't seem to have a clear plan for what comes next. AI is analyzing documents, writing briefing notes, creating Power Point presentations or handling customer service queries, and - surprise! - now the younger humans who normally do that work are struggling to find jobs. Recently, the chief executive officer of AI firm Anthropic predicted AI would wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. The reason is simple. Companies are often advised to treat ChatGPT "like an intern," and some are doing so at the expense of human interns. This has thrust college grads into a painful experiment across multiple industries, but it doesn't have to be all bad. Employers must take the role of scientists, observing how AI helps and hinders their new recruits, while figuring out new ways to train them. And the young lab rats in this trial must adapt faster than the technology trying to displace them, while jumping into more advanced work. Consulting giant KPMG, for instance, is giving graduates tax work that would previously go to staff with three years of experience. Junior staff at at PriceWaterhouseCoopers have started pitching to clients. Hedge fund Man Group Plc tells me its junior analysts who use AI to scour research papers now have more time to formulate and test trading ideas, what the firm calls "higher-level work." I recently interviewed two young professionals about using AI in this way, and perhaps not surprisingly, neither of them complained about it. One accountant who had just left university said he was using ChatGPT to pore over filings and Moody's Ratings reports, saving him hours on due diligence. Another young executive at a public-relations firm, who'd graduated last year from the London School of Economics, said tools like ChatGPT had cut down her time spent tracking press coverage from two and a half hours to 15 minutes, and while her predecessors would have spent four or five hours reading forums on Reddit, that now only takes her 45 minutes. I'm not convinced, however, that either of these approaches is actually helping recruits learn what they need to know. The young accountant, for instance, might be saving time, but he's also missing out on the practice of spotting something fishy in raw data. How do you learn to notice red flags if you don't dig through numbers yourself? A clean summary from AI doesn't build that neural pathway in your brain. The PR worker also didn't seem to be doing "higher-level work," but simply doing analysis more quickly. The output provided by AI is clearly useful to a junior worker's bosses, but I'm skeptical that it's giving them a deeper understanding of how a business or industry works. What's worse is that their opportunities for work are declining overall. "We've seen a huge drop in the demand for 'entry-level' talent across a number of our client sets," says James Callander, CEO of a Freshminds, a London recruitment firm that specializes in finding staff for consultancies. An increasing number of clients want more "work ready" professionals who already have a first job under their belt, he adds. That corroborates a trend flagged by venture capital firm SignalFire, whose "State of Talent 2025" report pointed to what they called an "experience paradox," where more companies post for junior roles but fill them with senior workers. The data crunchers at LinkedIn have noticed a similar trend, prompting one of its executives to claim the bottom rung of the career ladder was breaking. Yet some young professionals seem unfazed. Last week, a University of Oxford professor asked a group of 70 executive MBA students from the National University of Singapore if Gen Z jobs were being disproportionately eroded by AI. Some said "no," adding that they, younger workers, were best placed to become the most valuable people in a workplace because of their strength in manipulating AI tools, recounts Alex Connock, a senior fellow at Oxford's Saïd Business School, who specializes in the media industry and AI. The students weren't just using ChatGPT, but a range of tools like Gemini, Claude, Firefly, HeyGen, Gamma, Higgsfield, Suno, Udio, Notebook LM and Midjourney, says Connock. The lesson here for businesses is that sure, in the short term you can outsource entry-level work to AI and cut costs, but that means missing out on capturing AI-native talent. It's also dangerous to assume that giving junior staff AI tools will automatically make them more strategic. They could instead become dependent, even addicted to AI tools, and not learn business fundamentals. There are lessons here from social media. Studies show that young people who use it actively tend not to get the mental health harms of those who use it passively. Posting and chatting on Instagram, for instance, is better than curling up on the couch and doom-scrolling for an hour. Perhaps businesses should similarly look for healthy engagement by their newer staff with AI, checking that they're using it to sense-check their own ideas and interrogating a chatbot's answers, rather than going to it for all analysis and accepting whatever the tools spit out. That could spell the difference between raising a workforce that can think strategically, and one that can't think beyond the output from an AI tool. (Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of "Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.")