What happens to kids if AI takes entry level jobs? What you advising them?

Did these sorts of things impact one industry at a time or were they far reaching across all jobs.

I can see moving from horses to cars was a fairly quick transition so a lot of horse jobs were lost (but actually the carriage needed a driver, the car need a driver, the horse need a farrier, the car needs a tyre fitter) presumably that change didnt affect accountancy, law, nursing, teaching etc all at the same time.

I feel that AI and robotics is affecting every single job all at the same time in a way that doesnt just change how a human does the work but removes the number of humans by a lot and in a quick time frame.

For anyone thinking of a particular career path, this is a fun (and sobering) tool to explore: willrobotstakemyjob.com/

Apprenticeships and learning a trade is the way to go imo. Also there will be jobs created in the future that don’t exist at the moment that people will be employed to do.

This sort of thing has always happened. Look at the "grand houses" of the Victorian or Edwardian era and how many people were employed in the kitchens, the house, the gardens. Now an equivalently wealthy person may still employ some staff, but only a handful and with different skills to the past as tools and automation and computers have changed what you can do. How many staff did the average farm used to have 100 years ago, that is now farmed by one man and a couple of seasonal helpers? Offices had clerks and typing pools and "office boys". There were specialist draftsmen, now there's CAD. Even in my 20 years of work experience, when we started everything external involved posting letters and we had a post room and admin people who spent most of their time handling post. Now I can't remember the last time I printed and posted a letter. But equally we have whole teams that didn't exist when I started. My current job didn't! We're advertising for an AI cyber security specialist, even 5 years ago people would have said what on earth is that.

You need flexibility as there are few "careers for life" But there will likely always be jobs to do..

In my industry (tech) we have hugely reduced grad hires, and senior people are now directing AI to do the job that a team of juniors would have done in the past.

Of course this means that the pipeline of senior people is now effectively broken - there are no new graduates to learn, to develop, to gain experience, and to be promoted to senior positions.

But when your horizon is only as far as the end of the next quarter, no-one cares.

My old job was EA legal sec. I recently got a part time admin job in an area where I could potentially progress.

I’m now going to be retaining in a role where I can wfh and hopefully do part time. Utilising previous skills. Don’t want to retire yet but could potentially afford to, I enjoy my work.

I predict in the future, the leisure industry will increase hugely.

I have already seen adverts for weekend breaks or holidays with zero technology, back to nature, forest bathing, wild swimming, healthy food, exercise, art, poetry.

I have seen mobile mini wood fired saunas in seaside car parks.

I believe ancient artisan crafts will expand.

DNA genetics is linking people across the world, this will expand.

If robots take over driving, new jobs will be needed.

I personally think there will be some common sense appraisal of AI and its usefulness at some point. Already in the information sphere we are training staff in its use as a tool, very much not as a replacement for thinking.

There is a problem in recruitment for those seeking jobs post A Level/Further Education. Since the 90s employers have been recruiting graduates into some traditional entry levels in this area. I doubt we can reverse this but the quality of appointees with degrees is very often little or no different from post further ed appointments.

Entry level roles can be replaced by AI, but you still need (more senior) humans somewhere in the process to provide oversight.
That oversight requires experience, so it makes sense that companies still need to recruit enough graduates to eventually become those experienced senior members of staff when the current ones retire. Won't need as many though, so graduate roles will just become more and more competitive. Not sure what the surplus graduates will do.

In many industries including mine there are still people needed who can use AI well and “mark its homework” so it won’t replace us entirely. We have entry level jobs where you are using AI to do the job instead of doing the job yourself (which currently sometimes takes longer than just doing it!). I see it as similar to the invention of the battery calculator (my dad was an accountant). It reduced the workforce but actual accountants were and are still needed

My ds has a Saturday job now as a pool lifeguard. It's a legal requirement, the pool can't open without a team of lifeguards on rotation. AI can't dive into a pool and drag out a drowning child or perform cpr.

And he's taking a degree in renewable energy engineering. He wants to build hydroelectric plants and off shore wind farms. Every project has individual challenges, so while AI can help, human engineers with experience and imagination will always be needed.

I started work as the PC revolution happened. We were all told we'd be working 3 day weeks within a decade because PCs would reduce our workload to a few hours a week. That we should all plan what we would do with all our free leisure time 😁

40 years later I'm still flat out, 5 days a week. So I wouldn't worry about the young just yet. Wait and see how it pans out.

Interesting re accounting and law, as another thread the other day said accounting is already dead.

I work in accounting, I’m senior enough I’ll probably see it my career before AI can replace me - but I’m not sure my career would have been as successful as it is if I was starting out now, much less in 7 years. Our graduate roles can almost already be entirely replaced by AI, we’re just choosing not to so that (but have cut the number of available places significantly, and we are one of the biggest graduate recruiters in accountancy).

Short term manual trades will fare better, but long term they will face increasing competition (from all the people told to "get a trade") and a decreasing number customers who can afford to pay for their services.

Additionally, robots and automation are to manual jobs what AI is to desk jobs. And robots and automation are advancing at a very rapid pace.

An experienced tradesman, say a bricklayer, supervising a robot assistant will be able to do the jobs of multiple journeymen.

We see exactly the same in tech, where a senior developer with Claude Code can do the same job as a team of 4-5 junior developers. So we simply stopped hiring new graduates.

Infrastructure, think utilities such as gas, water telecommunications, power etc, rather than normal trades like electrician and plumber. We will always need that physical infrastructure to be maintained and people to manage it.

Health care, we are only getting mentally and physically sicker.

Also encourage diversity of skills and potential side gigs like photography.

This.

When the gas street lamp lighter, horse carriage riders and typists lost their jobs they probably felt the same but we’re not lamenting over those careers today.

That said, I have no idea what the world of work looks like in even ten years, and that has factored into my decision not to have kids.

It’s not the hilarious gotcha you think it is. Lots of jobs disappeared to computers. Know any typists, for example? Records clerks? It made it much harder to get a foot in the door for young people as fewer data analysts are needed than the old jobs they replaced (for example) and that is now getting worse. And women in spinning and weaving had a good work life balance and control of their earnings before the manufacturing industry wiped out cottage industries and drew so many people into appalling conditions in cities. It’s possible to appreciate technology while simultaneously understanding the effects of its development. But keep laughing as it’s clearly so funny that people are training and studying for nothing.

I heard on the radio that entry level graduate type roles are going due to AI. I’ll be keeping an eye on jobs markets over the next few years (dd14) and encouraging her as best I can to chose a career that has longevity. I’ve read that the ones most likely to survive AI are trades, nursing, teaching, accounting and law.

My grad is working retail - nice retail (artisan), but still. I think their career will be down the toilet due to AI. Four ago it wasn’t really a ‘thing’.
Other one is graduating this year in STEM - he should be ok in his field but I’m not 100% optimistic. He’s very clever and personable, he wouldn’t be interested in a trade.

I would love to be as nonchalant. But yeah, no point worrying about what I can't control. My own profession has been decimated by AI but I can afford to retire so count myself lucky.

That’s what people said when all those instances in mentioned happened 😁

Nobody can possibly know. Don’t aim them at specific careers unless you’re sure they will survive, because once they get automated it’s game over immediately. Acquire knowledge and nimbleness of thinking – they’ll have to find niches when they get there, and certainly be able to do that better than any of us can now.

It’s fascinating how it’s impossible to predict I must say. I’m pretty sure office work will be destroyed, but there won’t be mass unemployment because there’ll be too much human talent around not to use. But that might be in completely unexpected ways. Who in the 70s or 80s would have imagined that we’d have so many baristas? We might end up with a future full of soldiers and priests.

I think this is different, tbh.

Typewriters and typists took the jobs of copyists.

computers before AI took a lot of jobs - people used to do spreadsheets by hand, and type memos and letters. The typing pool is a thing of the past.

times change.

AI is reducing the number of entry level jobs but people are still needed because AI makes a fuckton of mistakes.

Mine are academic too. They would make shit plumbers.

Those are all the questions people asked when computers were first invented, and for that matter probably electricity, the steam engine and the printing press too.
Yet here we all are, still at our desks from 9-5, M-F for the best part of our lives.