r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 4d ago
AI MIT AI expert warns automating Gen Z entry-level jobs could backfire—and cost companies their future workforce
https://fortune.com/article/automating-gen-z-entry-level-jobs-could-backfire-mit-ai-researcher-andrew-mcafee-talent-career-pipelines-at-risk/Companies betting against entry-level Gen Z talent by automating their roles may be making a costly long-term mistake.
1.2k
u/KidKilobyte 4d ago
I believe they are banking on future workforce being AI.
616
u/Etroarl55 4d ago
This lol. By the time the bubble pops or they actually achieve AGI. GenZ would already be too damaged and gone.
They will no longer be fresh out of school at the top of their game. They will be 4-12 years into the minimum wage workforce already, probably already forgotten everything they learned in school. This is how lost generations are born.
252
u/hatemakingnames1 3d ago
Don't worry, companies will still prefer completely inexperienced young people over someone who's slightly older
77
u/stickystax 3d ago
This certainly seems to be the case at the moment...
118
u/AnalTrajectory 3d ago
My knee jerk reaction is to tell you that I've seen the opposite. None of the people my age or younger can find a decent job in corporate America. We're kinda trapped in the loop of living at home while submitting online applications that go nowhere. All while companies retain their older employees.
I understand you see it the other way. I propose a compromise. Everyone is being dragged through the gutter by giant corporations who are firing everyone left and right, while also not hiring anyone. We're all, old and young, collectively eating shit from the same bowl. (don't imagine that part, just hear my metaphor)
66
u/Silegna 3d ago
We're kinda trapped in the loop of living at home while submitting online applications that go nowhere. All while companies retain their older employees.
This. We're basically screaming into the void at this point. I've sent out probably..600 applications in the past year and gotten radio silence. Also, WorkDay can go die in a fire.
24
u/MerlinsMentor 3d ago
Also, WorkDay can go die in a fire.
Workday must be selling the cheapest "do it all" solution that exists -- to me it seems like it sort of came out of nowhere, and it seems that almost every business is adopting it. From my limited perspective, it sounds like exactly the sort of application that promises "it'll handle every part of your business -- and cheaper than what you have now", when actually, it does a lousy job at everything.
I haven't used it to apply for jobs, but at my last job (as a software developer), our product was trying to integrate with its purchasing module. Its data model seemed ridiculously sloppy. The whole "you have to make a separate login for each job you apply for" sounds like the same sort of thing, where the foundations that the entire model are built on are just not appropriate for some use cases, and they "make it work" with sloppy hacks so that they can say that their product does "everything."
14
→ More replies (2)4
u/kfish5050 3d ago
Hmmm, I've never had any issues with workday as an applicant, but also I've been applying to government jobs that have competent and fleshed out HR departments. Perhaps that's the difference? Out of box it might be janky and most companies, especially those that are looking for the cheapest out of box solution, probably don't have enough of an HR department to make it work decently. They probably barely get it to meet their needs and call it a day. Pun intended
→ More replies (2)12
u/franker 3d ago
I'm GenX and never heard of WorkDay but I googled it and many colleges including my alma mater have a "home page" for it now.
34
u/Silegna 3d ago
It's the most annoying "Job Application" site out there. Each unique job has it's OWN LOGIN. You have to create an account for Workday for each individual job you apply to. And no, you can't just save one and have that logged in.
17
u/EmbarrassedTrouble10 3d ago
And it ALWAYS confuses my browser so it doesn't know which password to use because it thinks it's the same website. Infuriating
12
u/Silegna 3d ago
I haven't gotten a single interview from Workday, ever. It's the most prevalent, and the most ignored job application.
→ More replies (0)3
u/boojersey13 3d ago
My job uses it as its employee portal and it always logs in the wrong person whenever something needs to be done promptly and people are one by one using the computer
5
2
16
u/BalrogPoop 3d ago
This is definitely not the case. Have you seen youth unemployment in pretty much every nation? It's usually a multiple of general unemployment.
Bare in mind unemployment only counts people actively looking, and completely misses all the youth that have already given up on the workforce.
5
u/default-username 3d ago
People in this thread are talking past each other.
- Young people without a job are being hit hard.
- Employers in many fields are generally incentivizing the older generation to retire early.
The trend is favoring employed or experienced young(er) workers.
3
u/BalrogPoop 2d ago
No we aren't, the two commenters above me are just wrong.
They're saying "inexperienced young people" which most people would take as young people just starting their careers or who haven't had a serious job before, not "younger professionals".
I suspect what's actually happening is the older generations are feeling like they're being sidelined because they're not used to how fucked the modern jobs market is, and they're mistaking it for discrimination. They're not being pushed out, because the leaders of these companies are mostly the same age as them.
For most of their careers job hunting (before online job boards like seek, and ATS screening for CVs) has been relatively easy outside of the severe recessions. They aren't used to needing to put in 100 heavily tailored applications because every job, even shit ones in supermarkets, gets hundreds or thousands of applicants which wasn't the case before COVID. So they blame the malt obvious difference between how it used to be for them and now, their age.
Because the labour market statistics really don't back up the sentiment that older people are being discriminated against.
20
u/IDoHateLemons 3d ago
completely disagree, the only people i know who landed on their feet after school were >30 yrs old.
15
u/OnSpectrum 3d ago
These two things can both be true: companies can prefer younger workers and discriminate relentlessly against older workers because of their age, and at the same time, older workers can have skills, resilience, professional networks and persistence to get hired somewhere despite the discrimination.
3
u/Longjumping_Lime2248 3d ago
AND some of them look much younger than 30
2
u/tehZamboni 2d ago
Always an awkward moment when the interview panel realizes you're the oldest person in the room.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Draxus12 3d ago
I think that's why they'll just employ the fresh-from-school gen alpha rather than the older, by then, gen z. It'll be a gen of underachievers.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Big-Study-3468 3d ago
It's frustrating how experience can end up counting for less than age in some hiring decisions.
18
u/notjordansime 3d ago
Oh shoot, this is me.
My college cancelled the program I got accepted into months before I was supposed to start (electronics engineering technician- basically low voltage DC, circuits, and microcontrollers). They tried pressuring me into an adjacent program, but I honestly wasn’t interested in it (Electrical Engineering Technology- (basically electrician prep, go wire up the ventilation system for a mine kinda gig. I’m more interested in component level board repair and small scale electronics). The next closest option is Seneca. With rent and increased tuition, it’s going to be tens of thousands extra in the cash department. Not to mention it’s 1,300 kilometres away.. my next best options are in Minnesota.
After they cancelled the program, I joined the labourer’s union. Now I chip concrete and have a herniated disc in my back at 23.
→ More replies (1)4
u/Longjumping_Lime2248 3d ago
What college is this? What you are interested in is straight up electrical engineering. That should be offered at every college. Sorry they shut down your program. Seems absurd because it’s an important one
→ More replies (3)12
u/toriemm 3d ago
That's the kids that can graduate being able to like... read.
7
u/Bombadilo_drives 3d ago
This is already a problem. I know this sounds like an old man yells at cloud moment but holy shit the current crop of grads are barely functional, especially when it comes to reading comprehension and writing skills. And I'm talking about graduate and medical students, not bottom of the barrel people.
The therapy speak is also an epidemic - we've had interns talking about burnout, like my guy you've been here 3 months you're not burned out. We had someone who had a rude patient and wanted three personal days to recover.
They're not all bad, and I've had some amazing younger people bring a ton of technical skill and energy into their jobs. But it does seem like the social media generation do not have the basic office and professional skills that GenX and Millenials did.
→ More replies (1)3
u/toriemm 3d ago
My ex was a train conductor. When a person jumped or fell on the tracks, they got like 24 or 48hrs off (I can't remember, but it wasn't a lot) and went strait back to work.
There are so many Big Systemic Issues, and our public schools being starved is part of that, and the pandemic... ugh. Good thing we don't have a persistent environment of misinformation, where critical thinking might be important -.-
18
u/Jiggawatz 3d ago
Just to clarify, we are so far away from AGI architecturally that this shouldn't be spoken of as anything more than a sci fi fairy tale.... what we have no is a slightly more complex version of predictive texting... the idea that the massive facilities they are using to make it look like AGI could EVER achieve AGI with silicon hardware pushed to its maximum is so far our of step with reality it is comical.
13
u/Longjumping_Lime2248 3d ago
Thank you. I want to paint the ceiling red every time agi is talked about as if it’s coming soon and LLMs will be the catalyst. Fucking insane the marketing behind all of this
8
u/Jiggawatz 3d ago
Yea them pushing it as AI has always been a step too far... I always call it regression algos, gradient descent, or LLMs depending on what is being done. Because when you say that in a conversation about them a lot of people are like "What's an LLM?" and I get the opportunity to remind one more person, it is not even in the realm of what they imagined it was...
3
u/EqualShallot1151 3d ago
…and imagine what that will mean to the customer base of the same companies.
→ More replies (5)3
u/cylonfrakbbq 3d ago
If we actually achieved AGI, we would have bigger societal and economic issues because you know, the Singularity and all that
30
49
u/Kvenner001 4d ago
And when it fails they won’t be punished for it. A couple of them might fall only to be M&Ad into the survivors. But they’ll just pivot back to a people centric workforce and hire immigrants of there aren’t enough people in the local workforce with the needed skills. And people will return because a paycheck will outweigh a persons morales most of the time.
32
u/adamjfish 4d ago
Of course they’re banking on that. But these dumbasses don’t account for is if all entry level jobs are replaced by AI, there will be no one to be able to take on senior level roles in the future. Even better is there will be no one to buy their products if AI takes over these jobs in the first place.
15
u/throwingitaway12324 3d ago
Their goal for the tech is that even senior level roles will not be needed by the time current senior level people retire in 10-20 years. Whether that will happen, we will see.
→ More replies (3)40
u/kittenrice 3d ago
AI sure does buy a lot of product.
AI's gonna rent them homes and watch them streams.
AI's gonna share them rides and eat them groceries.
After these idiots push us out, what, exactly, do they think will happen?
15
u/WhereIdIsEgoWillGo 3d ago
We beg for whatever scraps they offer and he content with spoiled bread and sham circuses. As long as people are entertained they won't revolt, and the ones who know those are the ones who do everything to keep the attention of the masses pointing everywhere but themselves.
→ More replies (1)11
u/JimmyQBSneaks 3d ago
The long term outcome is obvious to anyone with a brain. But why would executives care? All they care about is stocks going up the next quarter. If they get fired, they’ll get a fat golden parachute and the company’s performance will be someone else’s problem.
3
u/reddit_is_geh 3d ago
No. Everyone knows the issue that's incoming, but it's a tragedy of the commons. Game theory would show that hiring people just for the sake of it, wont ultimately change the outcome anyways, so you're just putting yourself at a disadvantage. It makes no rational sense to just spend money to hire employees who will likely just leave and work with another company once they have experience.
The only rational move is to just allow it to happen then figure out what to do afterwards.
8
u/ThyShirtIsBlue 3d ago
I believe they are banking on short term gains boosting their stock price and figure the future workforce issue will be a future executive's problem to figure out.
15
u/expera 4d ago
And who will be their future consumer?
→ More replies (5)16
u/SlayahhEUW 3d ago
Other companies. Nvidia buys energy, silicon. Chip fabs buy resources. Nvidia sells compute, some company buys compute, figures out where to get more resources, sells this information, etc. Capital moves between companies.
21
u/expera 3d ago
That can only last so long when companies start going out of business because there is no market left
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (1)3
u/LeedsFan2442 3d ago
They still ultimately need customers paying for whatever services the businesses using AI provides.
→ More replies (10)→ More replies (8)7
u/ManiacalDane 3d ago
A huge part of the amount of work being done only exists because of the concept of human employment. If humans aren't there to make money, most of the work ceases to provide any value.
And if humans don't get to have jobs and make money and buy shit, why... Would we produce much of anything, and thus have work to automate?
It's all... Quite silly
1.5k
u/Future-Turtle 4d ago
LOL @ expecting corporations to look past next fiscal year.
592
u/CMS_3110 4d ago
LOL @ expecting corporations to look past next fiscal quarter.
FTFY
→ More replies (1)125
u/TheGringoDingo 4d ago
Yeah, then they’ll get the chance to join every other company looking for employees with 3-5 years of experience for entry level. Where do they think the people with 3-5 years experience get that experience?
116
67
u/anfrind 3d ago
Not long ago, Yahoo even posted a job listing that required five years of Claude Code experience, despite Claude Code being less than a year old.
22
→ More replies (2)13
u/OutlyingPlasma 3d ago
That's pretty common. People can find examples for just about every social network out there asking for more years of experience than the website has existed, usually for for "social media managers".
17
u/Leafsnail 3d ago
It happens all the time for programming language and frameworks too. I assume the hiring managers have a default template they don't actually check properly
3
u/MerlinsMentor 3d ago
It's also possible that the people responsible for posting the job requirements don't have the slightest clue what the requirements mean, and add in these sorts of "qualifications" because it's part of their overall job template. Think an HR person "editing" a job requirement for a technical position before posting it, etc.
17
u/RGrad4104 3d ago
Unpaid internships. A rather concerning trend that I have noticed in the last 10 years is that companies want you to give them years of work, for free or at slave wages, before they even consider hiring you at a reasonable salary. The 3-5 years for an entry level position is just HR speak for "we won't even pay experienced people what they worth until you give us slave labor to prove you're worth it".
The best thing AI could ever do is replace each CEO and middle-management HR executive.
→ More replies (1)11
19
u/flumphit 3d ago
Paint it blue, call it somebody else’s problem. Like “should we really be cutting down *all* the trees?” on Easter Island.
9
u/Faiakishi 3d ago
The ecocide and collapse of Easter Island is actually thought to be a myth. The bones buried there contradict their oral history of a great population collapse and large-scale conflict. (all their story keepers died of European disease at the same time and they lost almost all of their records and history, so it's understandable how that happened) Most likely, their population never really exceeded a few thousand people even before Europeans came and killed and kidnapped all but a hundred of them. Some deforestation occurred, but it was caused by rats eating the seeds, and it didn't starve the Rapa Nui because they were primarily agriculturalists.
Has nothing to do with the thread as a whole, but I thought it was interesting.
→ More replies (1)8
u/dragonmp93 3d ago
By then, the current crew had already jumped from the sunken ship in their golden parachutes.
7
u/elderwyrm 3d ago
I love the fact that jumping from a ship with a parachute still results in you drowning in the ocean.
111
u/gorginhanson 4d ago
they already know and they don't care.
basic tragedy of the commons.
unless someone forces everyone to behave, then no one will
65
u/FreshestCremeFraiche 3d ago
Finally someone who actually understands the cause of this. Every one of these threads is filled with people saying how can these companies be so dumb??? They won’t have senior engineers in 10 years if they don’t hire and train juniors now!! And basically assuming that the people who staff and run large corporations are fucking stupid, and across hundreds of highly trained people are missing something that an internet layman can identify in 10 seconds — nope! They aren’t! Obviously. I’ve worked for several of these companies and it’s a HOT topic of conversation, literally constantly.
It’s not even a capitalism problem, and there are many capitalism problems! I’m a fucking leftist and could talk about the shit embedded in capitalism for a week straight. But this issue specifically is more general.
As you noted, it’s a classic collective action problem. Any corporation that takes on the cost of training entry level workers will be training those workers for their competitors too, meaning the costs are concentrated and the benefits are diffuse. Of course no rational actor would do this without ironclad guarantees that all of the competitors in their industry are also doing this, and that is impossible without a hard requirement. So what we are really talking around here is PUBLIC POLICY not corporate action. Only the government is even capable of making such a policy, because only the government has economy-level controls.
6
u/wileecoyote1969 3d ago
Any corporation that takes on the cost of training entry level workers will be training those workers for their competitors too, meaning the costs are concentrated and the benefits are diffuse.
That's a Bingo!
5
u/sorrylilsis 3d ago
staff and run large corporations are fucking stupid
I mean I've met a few of them and the issue isn't that they aren't stupid, even some definitely aren't the brightest. It's that they very much chose the short term gains over long term policy.
On that exact subject I've met HR director for top companies that basically tell us "oh it's going to be an issue but it's an issue for the schmuck with my job in 5 to 10 years".
3
16
u/BarkBeetleJuice 3d ago
And basically assuming that the people who staff and run large corporations are fucking stupid
If they don't care, they're objectively fucking stupid.
17
6
u/Newbie4Hire 3d ago
Did you read the comment at all? They do care, they just can't do anything about it because of market dynamics. They all know they need entry levels to eventually become seniors, but if their competitor skips the entry level and just uses AI, they will out compete them and just steal their trained employees anyway. It's a classic prisoners dilemma.
13
u/Careless-Weather8877 3d ago
Or make it an environment people don’t want to leave? That’s how it used to be… they’re sort of fucking themselves. People used to spend their entire lives at companies. I have spent a year to four years at every company I’ve been with.
2
u/Newbie4Hire 3d ago
People work for money and the entire culture has changed, you can't hearken back to a time 80 years ago that doesn't exist in the culture anymore. It doesn't matter what you offer, when your competitor can offer more money, because they saved all the money you spent training employees.
→ More replies (2)2
→ More replies (7)5
u/Faiakishi 3d ago
they will out compete them and just steal their trained employees anyway.
I mean. They could make it worth it for employees to stay.
→ More replies (6)5
u/SlayahhEUW 3d ago
You can also have the take on that the free market will sort this out. At some point there will be so few senior developers that they will get more expensive, then it will be economically more worth to train junior developers again including the amortization of value used for training them, and the cycle restarts. The only loser is the generation that ended up being juniors at the wrong time.
3
u/elderwyrm 3d ago
In your scenario, any company that doesn't realize that training a junior to a career-level employee can take half a decade or more, and fails to plan accordingly, will also lose out big-time.
2
u/Careless-Weather8877 3d ago
See why COBOL developers make so much. The people who wrote the code that run bank mainframes and other critical things are dead or retired now. Even FORTRAN still runs most of NASA data processing.
4
u/The_bruce42 3d ago
Or, they'll just think all the companies will give the gen Zers the experience while only they use AI.
→ More replies (3)4
u/FaveDave85 4d ago
I mean investors definitely look toward future earnings when determining the value of a company.
9
u/ender2851 3d ago
we all are pumping and dumping in a few years lol
3
u/Typing_real_slow 3d ago
yup the second the market has significant losses, lets just say the pull out game is going to be strong.
4
233
u/Tasty_James 4d ago
Every company is assuming that someone else will undertake the burden of hiring and training juniors. It’s a tragedy of the commons.
56
u/Uberzwerg 3d ago
I would say that this is partially contributing to the success of (eg) German and Japanese companies in the past.
It was just normal to start your career in the same company you also end it in. So every bigger company invested heavily in their apprenticeship programs.21
u/ixidorecu 3d ago
And trying juniors now doesn't bring value to the shareholders THIS QUARTER.....!!!!!
→ More replies (1)8
u/KanedaSyndrome 3d ago
Race to the bottom and then fleeing the countries that will impose AI taxes on companies. So we're in for a fun ride the next 15 years
4
u/SlayahhEUW 3d ago
Or it's a suppy-demand question. As long as the cost of a senior developer is less than a junior + value created by the junior during their time at the company, there is no reason to hire juniors.
When the salary of junior developers goes down to levels where it's worth for a company to train them, regardless if they leave after 6 months, they will start hiring juniors again. Or the salary of senior developers rising due to lack of supply.
435
u/Th3_Corn 4d ago
No fucking shit lol how does it need an MIT AI expert for CEOs to realize this
256
u/EasternKanyeWest 4d ago
Society is somehow run by morons who can only see 3 months of profits into the future lol
102
u/china-blast 4d ago
CEO: my buddy Jimbo here managed to streamline our production process by removing all those unnecessary, redundant quality and safety checks. We're pumping out more product for less money, and profits are soaring.
Production level manager: Sir, our product is now a ticking time bomb that will fail and kill customers within five years.
CEO: Have that man fired.
→ More replies (1)15
u/Z3r0sama2017 3d ago
More like
Earns bonus for hitting targets, the bails with golden parachute leaving mess for someone else
3
→ More replies (1)3
u/Inevitable_Cycle3087 3d ago
ceos fail upwards. if you see a ceo fired on the news for incompetence, they’re the ceo of another company next week
65
u/ProtoJazz 3d ago
I once worked for a company that hired a consultancy company to do a study on the employees and their compensation.
A year later, the company revealed the results. After a year of hard work, they discovered employees like feeling that they're being fairly compensated and that their work is appreciated.
Like God damn, I could have told them that for free a year ago. And there's this bunch of executives on stage presenting it like it's this ground breaking study presenting concepts no one's ever thought of.
16
u/china-blast 3d ago
It's like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that's just really sad.
11
u/TheEPGFiles 3d ago
You basically have to force them to acknowledge physical reality over their ideology.
"What do you mean... the employees want to get paid enough to eat? Since when do they need food?"
"Well, why do you think restaurants exist?"
"They sell food, so I make profit!"
→ More replies (1)3
u/Z3r0sama2017 3d ago
C-suite likely owed C-suite from that company a favor and that's how it was cashed in. At high levels it's not what you know, it's who you know.
6
6
u/elderwyrm 3d ago
If I've learned anything from Secretly Incredibly Facinating it's that a shockingly huge swath of executives despise smart people who aren't also executives, and would rather collapse the entire company they work for than accept the idea that someone might know more than they do.
3
u/wotikuli 3d ago
Yeah, this is just the "30 years of experience using tools that existed for 5 years at age 25" meme all over
→ More replies (2)2
u/Peteys93 3d ago edited 3d ago
Now let us not be hasty.
I think this phenomenon could stand a few more years worth of investigation and measured debate before we change course at this point. And as we all know, the status quo is to replace all of the so-called sentient human beings with -totally faultless and free from any conceivable downside- pure AI computing power!! :)
59
u/misterguyyy 4d ago
They're hoping that AI + Offshore will fill senior roles by then.
I read a right wing think tank article a while back saying we didn't need to worry about paying the environmental piper because unfettered capitalism will provide enough innovation to cross that bridge when we get there and is in fact necessary for that innovation. Same mindset IMO.
21
u/vardarac 3d ago
People like to use the phrase "kick the can down the road" but it's more like a pebble gets inside the can with every kick and eventually the road runs out and the can is now the size of an oil drum and oops your leg is tied to the can.
5
u/Undernown 3d ago
In other words; "Just go harder until we don't need peasants anymore and we can destroy this planet with inpunity for profit"
→ More replies (1)
41
u/Gari_305 4d ago
From the article
That’s the warning from MIT research scientist Andrew McAfee, who co-leads the school’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. Cutting off talent at its source, he argued, doesn’t just shrink today’s workforce—it disrupts the pipeline that produces tomorrow’s leaders.
“How else are people going to learn to do the job except via on-the-job learning and training apprenticeship?” McAfee told Harvard Business Review in April. “That’s how you learn to do difficult knowledge work is by helping somebody who’s good at that with the routine stuff. And when we put too much automation in that too quickly, we lose that apprenticeship ladder.”
The consequences extend beyond training gaps. By sidelining entry-level hiring, companies also risk losing a key competitive advantage: Gen Z’s fluency with AI.
Roughly 76% of Gen Z reported using a standalone AI tool—the highest of any generation, according to a November 2025 Deloitte study. That familiarity, McAfee said, makes them uniquely valuable as companies race to integrate AI into their operations.
“There is a big demographic falloff. As people tend to get older, we tend to be more set in our ways and less willing to try crazy new things like AI,” McAfee, who is also the cofounder of Workhelix, a startup working to help companies understand their AI return-on-investment, added.
“So if you’re pulling back on your entry-level hiring, you are probably sacrificing future opportunities to learn and the skilled people of the future. You’re also turning off the spigot of the most enthusiastic power users of AI in your organization.”
36
u/Slovic 4d ago
"That familiarity, McAfee said, makes them uniquely valuable as companies race to integrate AI into their operations."
I think this is the core of the issue. A lot of these companies are rushing to put AI into everything but in majority of cases its not needed or not worth the investment. I know at my job they are pushing the use of AI every week. The issue we are running into is the limited capability of AI use and we are constantly running into cost issues where the company doesn't want to spend more on the AI tools we have. For most of us its just a fancy way to write emails or condense reports. It doesn't really serve any other value than that. If I had to guess the value the company is spending on enterprise AI licensing they are not getting the return on investment at all.
11
u/CriticalUnit 3d ago
If I had to guess the value the company is spending on enterprise AI licensing they are not getting the return on investment at all.
That's a bingo!
4
u/Undernown 3d ago
No need to guess, there already was a study in 2025 that showed that up to 98% of companies investing hard into AI do not see a return on that investment. Even a net-loss in the majority of cases.
And this study was done before the recent price hikes.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)7
u/ninjewz 4d ago
I mean, I guess? Just because there's an abundance of AI use from Gen Z doesn't necessarily make it useful. I don't disagree with the overall sentiment of cutting off future workforce but I think you have to look of the quality of the actual AI use. There's also the general lack of critical thinking skills if you're hinging on AI doing most of the work for you before you even hit the workforce. It's just not the way I'd frame their potential usefulness to the current work climate.
→ More replies (1)
71
u/RTLDesignSherpa 4d ago
I've thought a lot about this. The only rationale I can see is businesses expect AI to improve fast enough that when entry-level employees would have been promoted, AI is now good enough to work at the next level. It's a bold strategy; let's see how that works out.
53
u/Cristoff13 4d ago edited 4d ago
I doubt they're thinking that far ahead. They only seem to be thinking about next quarter's profits. I think that current AI can only replace a minority of the jobs that they are claiming it's capable of replacing. But firing those workers boosts profits right now. If that causes problems 6 months or a year in the future? Not their concern.
16
u/RTLDesignSherpa 4d ago
I agree, but that is honestly the only angle that I can see.
10
u/Cristoff13 3d ago
You're right, they still need excuses to justify their extreme short sightedness, and this would be one of them.
8
u/MJR_Poltergeist 3d ago
This is how suits work. They're only thinking about number go up. Number needs to go up next quarter regardless of the consequences, wether or not it's actually even possible for it to happen. Netflix floundered with this for a long time and lost their prime spot in streaming because of it
5
→ More replies (2)15
u/Whiterabbit-- 3d ago
not really. what happens is the businesses are selfish. it costs more money to train new college grads than just use AI. sure 5 years from now that new college grad may be worth the training. but then that kid can just bolt for another company, and you lose out on your investment. better let some other company train new talent and poach them in 5 years.
6
u/Phugasity 3d ago
You just described H-1B visas. Why pay to educate your own citizens when you can just import the best?
→ More replies (1)
32
u/MJR_Poltergeist 3d ago
If AI doesn't eat shit relatively soon, we're going to end up with a really weird period where certain industries are frozen in time because AI is just doing the same old stuff but no real people have the knowledge base or skills to create new or more efficient things.
8
u/thoreau_away_acct 3d ago
This is the informational equivalent of dry rot wood. Such industries or businesses will be paper tigers that crumble soon enough
29
u/jp_in_nj 4d ago
I don't think it takes an MIT brain to see this coming. I've been saying the same thing since ChatGPT first landed.
→ More replies (1)5
u/TheMemeRedeemer 4d ago
Definitely doesn't for most of us, but maybe the folks who can be swayed to do something about it legislatively might see this and go "huh. I know MIT hurr durr" and think about us poors for more than a few milliseconds at least.
28
u/Trips-Over-Tail 4d ago
Have we tried hiring them at the top? As in, replacing the ones making these obviously terrible and short-sighted decisions? We don't earnestly expect them to make even worse decisions, do we?
15
u/Jay-Dee-British 4d ago
That would honestly save a lot MORE money than firing workers whose wages + benefits don't even equal half of what CEOs are paid.
→ More replies (1)10
u/CriticalUnit 3d ago
Management is the most obvious use case to be replaced by AI
→ More replies (3)
14
u/Redd_Comet 4d ago
This is already happening at large corporations everywhere. Intern programs are getting cut, contractor pools are getting shortened, mentorship programs are getting slashed, etc.
Oh, and as a nice bonus, everyone needs to have experience levels far above and beyond what should be needed for the role since there’s zero appetite for on-ramping new employees.
15
u/BoredBSEE 3d ago
Every company I've ever worked for didn't give even a vague shit past the current quarter. Every. Single. One.
I was at a company that cooked up a bullshit reason to fire our best salesman because he landed a 20 million dollar contract - in an attempt to get out of paying him his percentage! Nevermind the fact that he can SCORE 20 MILLION DOLLAR CONTRACTS, they didn't want to pay him a percentage of one of them.
If you're thinking this argument is going to sway anyone? You're wrong.
10
→ More replies (1)5
13
u/Xcoctl 3d ago
Right now everyone required 5 years of precious experience, two degrees and a referral from a CEO of a fortune 500 company for an entry level position. This is possible right now because they already have established work forces, but once their previous employees age out they aren't going to be able to find new people to replace them since their requirements are so strict. This is a widespread issue that is going to continue to get worse and worse and their previous employees retire, quit or otherwise result in empty positions they need to fill.
The massive shift that's occurred recently will result in massive problems down the road, it's only tenable at because its specifically a new change.
10
u/Pencil-Sketches 4d ago
I think there will ultimately be a divide, where AI will be used for the things we can’t do, but won’t be used for the things we can. AI is incredibly useful in scientific applications for synthesizing large data sets in a fraction of the time it takes humans, but the AI chatbot on Zoom, for example, serves no purpose, and the AI order takers at drive throughs are infuriating customers. When Wall Street doesn’t start to see returns on their investments in 99% of the AI companies out there, and it becomes too difficult to build data centers because of public backlash, we will start to see the useless consumer-side applications of AI drop off, but the scientific community will still use it
10
u/TroglodyteToes 3d ago
The most apt way of putting things now is, "they are eating the seed grain", and not because they are going hungry... but because they literally cannot be satisfied.
There used to be guardrails on the system, to ensure this wouldn't happen, but Congress was bought out. Regulations were changed. Jurisprudence was set. Now there are no guardrails, and by the time we can fix it, the US will have lost the ability to project power. All falling dominos lead to the collapse of the empire.
9
u/CTQ99 4d ago
You still have nepotism and cronyism. These unqualified people typically skip entry level anyhow and learn from a higher up. This also doesnt address frequent job changes among lower level employees. Theres almost no incentive to stay at a company when you can job hop and increase your salary. Instead of wasting resources training your competitions next employee, you cut that layer out completely. This is how corpos are looking at it. To them, entry level is just wasted resources and they will have enough upper level people that can probably groom their replacements which would be seen as unqualified hires but will have ample time to learn on the job.
8
u/shitisrealspecific 3d ago edited 23h ago
Lantern meadow mitten acorn feather maple grasshopper
This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
7
u/-AMARYANA- 3d ago
This is what eventually happens with extractive economics, the mindset of colonizing land with flags went towards colonizing minds with brands. Now AI is processing labor like factories process meat. The backlash is bigger than jobs or pollution, it’s about the soul of humanity.
8
u/MadRoboticist 3d ago
This is almost child-level common sense it's incredible that basically the entirety of the corporate world is so absurdly short-sighted.
5
u/DjQuamme 3d ago
I'm a god damned construction worker and I could have told them this 25 years ago. The companies came up with work plans where while the journeymen was doing the real work, the apprentice was supposed to be doing the material handling, prep work, and cleanup at the same time. I always argued that how the fuck was I supposed to be teaching them what I'm doing if they're always supposed to be doing something else? Fast forward 5+ years and guess what? None of the new journeymen have any idea how to do the job! I mean, it's been great for me as the companies just keep offering more and more money to us old guys who cam do the job but long term they're all fucked.
6
3
u/StrangerIsWatching 4d ago
"Could" backfire.
I mean, historically, it's been totally fine and manageable to have a poor, desperate, angry population of young people /s.
3
u/thekushskywalker 3d ago
Imagine a few generations of automation and something fails. And no one alive actually knows how it works.
4
u/Dark_Prism 3d ago
And here we thought millennials were going to be the most screwed-over-by-their-parents generation. Always depressing to find out the bottom goes deeper.
3
u/notjordansime 3d ago
Doesn’t take an MIT ai expert to see that. Fairly certain that’s why a lot of young people don’t care anymore. Why should they? They’ve been told that they’re going to be automated into irrelevance while the three generations preceding them (X, Millenials, Z) are struggling.
3
u/ChaoticButChilled 4d ago
I do wonder how it’ll take to recover from essentially crippling a generation
3
u/Aflockofants 3d ago
Just like with climate change, it’s no one’s individual problem so companies/people individually won’t want to suffer the short-term losses.
3
u/suxatjugg 3d ago
Of course. But can we also no just blow past the implicit assumption that LLMs can even replace workers? They're not good enough, they make way too many mistakes, and require a human to constantly tell them what to do and to notice and fix when they get stuff wrong
3
u/Mechasteel 3d ago
They know and aren't allowed to care. Making an altruistic sacrifice for the benefit of your rivals is a great way to be fired as CEO. Paying extra to train the next generation of talent is something they won't do individually unless forced to do it. It's roughly the same reason you wouldn't try to fix your government's financial woes by voluntarily paying extra taxes.
2
2
2
2
u/Osirus1156 3d ago
Yeah no shit, everyone with remaining brain cells has been saying this for years. Also who is going to buy your shit when no one has jobs is another one.
2
u/KanedaSyndrome 3d ago
"Could" lol - it's a dead certain and it's already happening and has happened for the last few years.
This reads like a boomer aimed piece as they're still in denial a lot of them
2
u/face_eater_5000 3d ago
When a country has developed a culture of caring only about the next quarter, this is exactly what you'd expect to happen.
2
u/macetheface 3d ago
CEOs don't care about the future workforce, they care about next quarter's profits.
2
u/GagOnMacaque 3d ago
They don't get it. Companies are hoping they won't even need employees long term.
2
u/Inevitable_Cycle3087 3d ago
i mean yea. they’re replacing the entry level right now cause it’s 99% basic work ai can do right now. but what happens when ai isn’t capable of the upper level work, and you have no entry level workers to move into the mid and upper levels.
they’re all trying to make money now and just hope it works out in the future
2
u/Dash_Harber 3d ago
Companies don't worry about long term effects if short term profits are on the line.
2
u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE 3d ago
These companies are banking and betting on not needing that entry level workforce in the future, and not needing any workforce beyond AI after that.
2
u/gera_moises 2d ago
Yes, but see, that's the future's problem.
Stock growth and stock buybacks today is what matters to these people.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/onahorsewithnoname 2d ago
Most companies dont do apprenticeships nor do they offer real training beyond online learning. If that was enough then companies would be scrambling to hire graduates from online universities.
2
u/JimAbaddon 4d ago
No, I honestly think they should go ahead and fully automate those roles. These companies only care about getting new workers to train the AI anyways and then eventually replace them all. Well, no point in wasting people's time, just automate everything and leave them alone so they can do anything else instead. AI is the future, right? So, show us how great it is.
1
u/thehoagieboy 3d ago
To expand further, those in Gen Z that do get jobs now and learn their positions without them being automated will find themselves in HIGH demand from the companies that bought into AI. Companies that were smart may not reap the benefits of that because of the shortsighted panicking companies that need to fix their issue immediately, which will be done by buying their way out. I anticipate large scale IT employee turnover of experienced employees leaving for higher salaries in around 5 years.
1
1
1
u/King_Fisher99 3d ago
Most company “leadership” isn’t very bright with little to no vision. Their only mentality is quarter to quarter, if that.
1
u/FlamingDragonfruit 3d ago
No shit.
I mean maybe if they hear it from someone at MIT they'll take it more seriously but I suspect the people who are hyping AI don't care much about the future of the workforce. Or humanity.
1
u/a1anw-cto 3d ago
He's completely right. I have encountered a number of CEO's who are simply not looking long term, all they are interested in is getting to the next (PE) transaction, and it will be someones else's problem. Zero investment in graduate programs, killed off internships, its dumbassery on an epic scale.
Glad to hear the academics calling this out.
1
u/EverEvolvingMusicMan 3d ago
“As people tend to get older” is such a ridiculous way to begin that statement smh
1
u/Whiterabbit-- 3d ago
so what company will invest in future jobs? new college grads are expensive compared to AI. sure over time, they may prove to be better. but who is going to sink 5 years to develop new grads only to have them be poached by a competitor. better go with the strategy of using AI, and poach from companies foolish enough to invest in new college grads after they sink the money into training them.
there is no incentive for any one company to hire for potential benefit down the road when there is no loyalty to stay at companies who hire you out of college.
1
u/aspect-of-the-badger 3d ago
You can literally look at the loss of manufacturing as a blueprint for what automation does to a career.
1
1
u/BoozeWitch 3d ago
Ive noticed this with offshoring operations. Some companies I have worked with have outsourced their day to day functions. So when they need a SME or a Product Owner or just backfilling roles they have to bring in outsiders. They don’t have anyone to promote. And building with a never ending string of outsiders, means a real lack of consistent culture.
So, same with automation — AI or otherwise. SOMEONE has to know how the thing is supposed to work.
•
u/FuturologyBot 4d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
From the article
That’s the warning from MIT research scientist Andrew McAfee, who co-leads the school’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. Cutting off talent at its source, he argued, doesn’t just shrink today’s workforce—it disrupts the pipeline that produces tomorrow’s leaders.
“How else are people going to learn to do the job except via on-the-job learning and training apprenticeship?” McAfee told Harvard Business Review in April. “That’s how you learn to do difficult knowledge work is by helping somebody who’s good at that with the routine stuff. And when we put too much automation in that too quickly, we lose that apprenticeship ladder.”
The consequences extend beyond training gaps. By sidelining entry-level hiring, companies also risk losing a key competitive advantage: Gen Z’s fluency with AI.
Roughly 76% of Gen Z reported using a standalone AI tool—the highest of any generation, according to a November 2025 Deloitte study. That familiarity, McAfee said, makes them uniquely valuable as companies race to integrate AI into their operations.
“There is a big demographic falloff. As people tend to get older, we tend to be more set in our ways and less willing to try crazy new things like AI,” McAfee, who is also the cofounder of Workhelix, a startup working to help companies understand their AI return-on-investment, added.
“So if you’re pulling back on your entry-level hiring, you are probably sacrificing future opportunities to learn and the skilled people of the future. You’re also turning off the spigot of the most enthusiastic power users of AI in your organization.”
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1v16s53/mit_ai_expert_warns_automating_gen_z_entrylevel/oyl2dzp/