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The Evidence That AI Is Destroying Jobs For Young People Just Got Stronger
(www.derekthompson.org)
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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There’s a growing wisdom gap coming in America. The people who are already well versed in company practices and culture are going to use AI to complete the tasks that they would have otherwise given to assistants and junior resources.
The junior resources are going to struggle to find jobs because they are lacking in the KSAs that schools simply cannot provide training for. And that means when us Gen Xers and later Millenials retire there could be a major gap where we have few people with that inherent knowledge to replace us. And where there’s no work and no hope, you get something akin to what is starting to occur in China right now…or revolt.
My hope is that schools will be rethought and there will be a lot more focus on getting an internship early and for the long term. Something more like apprenticeships, which the blue collar workforce maintained, but it’s something we’ll likely need to bring back to white collar jobs.
This isn’t to say that schools should diminish a well rounded education. I think it’s extremely important for students to take electives outside of their focus for a multitude of reasons, one being that it helps students realize the importance of how others contribute to society.
Apprenticeships can help to fill the knowledge gap, but the white collars that are in the jobs now will also need to be retrained and made comfortable to work with a large influx of apprentices to make this approach a success.
Counterpoint: no, they are not. Not with the current path of tech progress on the field, at least.
Because seniors well versed in company practices and culture will get tired of having to manually redo junior work corrections really quick, and we are nowhere close to closing the error correction needs at this point.
Repetitive work that could feasibly have been automated or removed already? Maybe. There was a TON of room for automation that people weren't investing on doing and the AI gold rush will feasibly take advantage of some of that. But AI replacing junior jobs wholesale? Nah. The tech isn't there.
Exactly. The senior is willing to put up with the constant questions and mistakes of a junior/intern, because after a few months, they will be better and take some workload off the senior’s shoulders.
With “AI”, there is no learning curve, it’s like you get a different fresh intern every day, and you have to correct the same mistakes constantly.
Agreed, the narrative to which you're responding is the sales pitch and won't be born out by reality long-term
You really think education reform is going to win out over creating a giant pool of uneducated serfs for Jeff‘s warehouses? I would give anything for your sense of optimism, honestly.
Yes, I do, because we are many and we persevere.
Here we are celebrating Labor Day, the day that celebrates workers rights - overtime pay for working over 40 hours, limiting children from having to work in factories, weekends and time off.
It was a hard fight from serfdom to poor factory conditions to now. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
kind of seems like the ladder getting pulled up
kind of seems like the ladder getting pulled up