Will AI hurt young workers most? Or the experienced?

Jury is still out but experts say ultimate answer will impact jobs at all levels

- Noam Scheiber

NEW YORK - When Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy wrote in June that he expected the company's use of artificial intelligence (AI) to "reduce our total workforce" over the next few years, it confirmed the fear among many workers that AI would replace them. The fear was reinforced two weeks later when Microsoft said it was laying off about 9,000 people, roughly 4 per cent of its workforce.

That AI is poised to displace white-collar workers is indisputable. But what kind of workers? Mr Jassy's notice landed in the middle of a debate over just this question.

Some experts argue that AI is most likely to affect novice workers, whose tasks are generally simplest and therefore easiest to automate. Mr Dario Amodei, CEO of the AI company Anthropic, recently told Axios that the technology could cannibalise 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 AI is the cause of their job market struggles.

But other captains of the AI industry take the opposite view, arguing that younger workers are likely to benefit from AI and that experienced workers will ultimately be more vulnerable.

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 labour market.

Economists and other experts who study AI often draw different conclusions about whom it's more likely to displace.