A new study out of Stanford University suggests that artificial intelligence tools are making it much harder for workers looking to fill entry-level positions in software development and customer service, as per Bloomberg. It noted a significant slowing in employment for younger, inexperienced workers, but found that employment prospects for more experienced workers may have actually improved.
Although a recent MIT study suggested that most businesses employing AI didn’t see much of an improvement in profitability, it hasn’t stopped many companies around the world from pushing to adopt it in some fashion. In some specific industries, that adoption may be harming the career prospects of those seeking entry-level positions.
The Sanford study, coauthored by economist Erik Brynjolfsson and researchers at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, found that over the past three years, employment for people starting out in fields that are more vulnerable to AI had fallen. Entry-level roles for accounting, development, and admin fell by 13%. This particularly affected younger employees in the 22-25 age bracket, although the study did note that other entry-level fields, like nursing technicians, had seen an uptick in employment during that same period.
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It also found that more-experienced roles and positions at the tracked companies either remained the same or grew in scope, suggesting perhaps that more experienced workers utilizing AI may be able to be more productive, absorbing some of the functions of those entry-level positions in the process.
The study reportedly tracked data from payroll processor Automatic Data Processing, and considered payroll statements from thousands of companies, with a collective millions of employees.
Since the debut of popular AI chatbot tools like ChatGPT, there’s been an ongoing debate about their impact on the workplace. The argument that they can automate simple roles in specific industries appears to be given at least some weight by this study. The counterargument suggests that AI tools may make people more productive, increasing overall output rather than eliminating entry-level roles.
This study appears to suggest that the argument may also be true, and indeed, perhaps both can coexist. It does raise the question of how these kinds of roles will be filled in the future, though. If AI makes already-high-performing employees perform even better, but eliminates the roles that allowed them to reach that experience and ability in the first place, where will the next generation of developers, accountants, and admin assistants come from?
Some industry leaders believe those roles will simply be taken over by AI, whereas others believe it may lead to more creative endeavours, making humans more suited for the ideation portion of a company’s efforts, rather than in the execution.
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