We hear it everywhere right now: AI is taking our jobs. A discussion at BR HQ recently got us thinking about something slightly different.
AI might not just be taking jobs. It might also be taking pathways.
Take law. AI can already do much of the heavy lifting traditionally done by paralegals and junior associates; research, document review, first drafts. Commercially, it makes sense that firms may need fewer people in those roles.
The problem is that those roles were never just about getting the work done. They were also where people learned how to become senior associates, partners and directors.
That junior work is where you learn. You pull together the research. You build the presentation. You sit in meetings where you’re probably not making the strategic decisions, yet you’re watching how they’re made. You start seeing how information is organised, what matters, what doesn’t, how problems are approached and how experienced people exercise judgement. Over time, you become one of those experienced people.
We’re also seeing industries competing for experienced people with that elusive requirement: transferable skills.
…but those skills must come from somewhere.
If we progressively remove the roles where people develop them, we risk creating a very different workforce problem. We may have incredible technology and highly experienced senior people, with a growing gap underneath them.
For those of us who already have years of experience under our belts, perhaps this doesn’t feel particularly urgent. We already climbed the ladder.
The next generation may find that some of the first rungs have disappeared.
Education matters, of course, but it can’t carry this alone. We can’t expect people to remain in classrooms until they’re somehow “experienced”. Critical thinking, judgement, problem solving, communication and workplace behaviours are developed through actually working alongside other people and being exposed to real problems.
This is where I think business leaders have a responsibility.
If technology allows us to operate with fewer junior people, the conversation can’t simply be about how much cost we can remove. We also need to think about how we develop the people we’ll need in five, ten or twenty years.
That could mean completely rethinking graduate programs and entry-level roles. There may even be a role for government through incentives for organisations that continue investing in genuine early-career pathways as technology changes the workforce.
I don’t know what the answer is, and I don’t think any one business or industry can solve it alone.
What concerns me is that we’re making decisions today based on productivity and the bottom line without fully considering what they could do to our future skills pipeline.
Cutting junior roles might solve a capacity or cost problem today while quietly creating a capability problem ten years from now.
And by the time we realise we’ve lost the pathway, rebuilding it may be much harder.
