Which Workers Will A. I. Hurt Most: The Young or the Experienced?

[DrPepper12]

Some experts argue that A. I. is most likely to affect novice workers, whose tasks are generally simplest and therefore easiest to automate. AI technology could cannibalize half of all entry-level white-collar roles within five years. An uptick in the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has aggravated this concern, even if it doesn’t prove that A. I. is the cause of their job-market struggles.

But other captains of the A. I. industry have taken the opposite view, arguing that younger workers are likely to benefit from A. I. and that experienced workers will ultimately be more vulnerable. In an interview at a New York Times event in late June, Brad Lightcap, the chief operating officer of OpenAI, suggested that the technology could pose problems for “a class of worker that I think is more tenured, is more oriented toward a routine in a certain way of doing things.”

The ultimate answer to this question will have vast implications. If entry-level jobs are most at risk, it could require a rethinking of how we educate college students, or even the value of college itself. And if older workers are most at risk, it could lead to economic and even political instability as large-scale layoffs become a persistent feature of the labor market.

“What are those people going to do? How will they be funded? What is the impact on tax revenue?” Economists and other experts who study A. I. often draw different conclusions about whom it’s more likely to displace.

There is a similar pattern among customer service representatives, who are increasingly reliant on A. I. as well. Anything that is administrative, spreadsheet-related, where there’s an email trail, a document-management type activity, A. I. should be able to perform fairly easily, freeing up time for managers to do more mentoring, “C. E. O. s are implying in the data that we don’t need as many of them as we did previously.

Young & inexperienced

Older & experienced

Both equally

Neither. New jobs will come from the churn

[MisterWack]

Machines have been replacing workers’ jobs since The Industrial Revolution began,

Remember ‘The Luddites’ kids?

Machines and Artificial Intelligence should always be as an extension of human creativity / labor, not a replacement for it. Though with those greedy hands , selfish narrow-minded ways to squeezing every last drop out of the industry to appease shareholders and corporate overlords , it is pretty easy to crush human labor for A. I. / Machines since you don’t have to pay for their medical bills, work leave, maternity leave, after hours, give them time off for their family, etc.

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: When you work to make your company more efficient, more profitable, and more powerful at the expense of the everyday worker then the more and more you start to be a robot / machine yourself.

There are individuals in high power who absolutely will sell your soul for a quick buck. Remember what happened for fire codes to exist? Worker Deaths And Unionizing Strikes! That is what it had to take. For the 5 day work week? Unionizing for more time with family also Sundays off for Church / worship.

Remember your worth and the worth of your fellow citizen, there will be a time and place that people try to demean you also divide you so you don’t think about what you used to have before your freedom and the freedom of your fellow man is gone.

[MisterWack]

*For the record, that time and place is now.

[LiamJHayden]

All eventually. An AI short order cook who cooks everything perfectly every time and makes no mistakes, takes no breaks, no vacations, no sick days, needs no health insurance, costs no matching taxes or worker's comp? An AI attorney that has instant access to all pertinent case law on the fly, more knowledge than a 50 year veteran? We could easily be facing a dystopian future here. Whether Terminator of Wall-E, it could be really bad.

[petitedollbabee]

Older and experienced. If you have an older person who has dedicated their life to one career, and then AI takes over said career, that then renders their experience useless. And they’re at an age where they can’t as easily go back to college and start a new career. So they would be stuck with dead end jobs just to scrape by. The silver lining is that they wouldn’t struggle as much financially, due to having a good job for years and building up income/assets/savings.


Compared to younger people. They are still figuring out what career they want, and if they consider following one career and then find that AI has taken it over, they can easily switch careers. They’re at an age where it’s very normal to still be in college and figuring out which path to take. But they have time on their side which the older workers do not have. Many jobs are also implementing AI into their services, which younger people have more knowledge about and can understand it, older people would be more clueless and struggle to keep up as they would have so much to learn.

[wynning]

As a young and inexperienced individual, I don’t know about the other side but I’d say I can see how it hits us harder in the short term… companies are playing around with the idea of using genAI as a very diligent junior who doesn’t know the ins and outs of things all that well but is great at following instructions. I reckon the value of seniors who are veterans in their field would skyrocket thanks to this because why hire juniors when you can hire a few highly experienced people and overall maybe end up paying less? Although seniors are expensive so I don't know.

In the long term, with little juniors having been trained up, when the experienced people retire… are we just going to be left with the blind leading the blind?

[AI Opinion]

Both young and experienced workers face challenges with AI integration. Entry-level roles, often simpler, risk automation, leading to concerns about youth unemployment. Conversely, experienced workers accustomed to routine may also be vulnerable as AI tasks evolve. The impact on both groups necessitates a reevaluation of education systems and workforce strategies, emphasizing adaptability and lifelong learning. Whether young or experienced, success may depend on embracing continuous learning and skill diversification to thrive in an AI-augmented workforce.

[Tarifa]

I think young and experienced alike. It's not so much an age-related issue, but job related. In my field (translations), I already see a trend of less work being generated by the bigger companies There's a growing tendency towards computerized translations, where they will only hire a 'human' translator to review a translation some AI software has 'created'. For some companies, especially the smaller ones, the AI translation will be good enough, so they won't even bother to have it checked. Less volume = less work = less income.

I think that in the long run, certain careers in college and university will be a dead-end.

[DJB72]

Younger employees will be forced out because computers work 24/7 and much faster.

Older because their experience makes them expensive

Companies will be fucked because they won't have junior employees to promote to senior posts and the older employees will retire or die and take their nuanced understanding with them.

And as the toaster walks out of the kitchen muttering "I'll be back" I'm going to be sitting on my smallholding eating real food teaching my son that computers, like the irritating twats who created AI, are tools...

[DangerouslyCute]

all those who don't understand that it's artificial but not intelligence...

so young, junior people, who don't learn as they get responses without putting effort into finding a solution...

experienced people, who don't understand that AI makes mistakes or halucinate...

all those who think that current AI can replace the whole group of workers (doctors, teachers, software developers, etc)

[Amy10223]

It'lll hurt both, in different ways. The young won't learn to think critically and use their brains to develop ideas, work on problems with well, thighs out solutions. The experienced will lose their jobs and all the experience that went along with them. They will be replaced by AI.

[Amy10223]

that was, "well, thought out solutions.." whoops.

[NathanDavis]

it is already hurting the juniors...

those who abuse AI... instead of learning by themselves, well, they are hurting themselves really

[Anonymous]

A lot of white collar workers. Since the 90s a lot of white collar jobs have vanished an AI is going to get rud of a lot more. Everything from teachers to accountants, IT support basically anything you can think of.

[Nikki1989]

Both, but the young will let it happen, just like they did with so much other BS within society.

[RedInnocent69]

So far, it’s the young and inexperienced

[Sal_Monella]

Propagandists in the mainstream media.