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    Tech boss: AI will take half of entry level jobs in the UK
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    Tech boss: AI will take half of entry level jobs in the UK

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    47 Comments

    1. Yojimbud on

      This is obvious and none of our politicians seem to be talking about it. AI is going to absolutely fuck this country and its tax base.

    2. MultiMidden on

      The first automation revolution hit blue collar jobs (was at the pub with a mate and his now retired dad, he was saying in the 60/70s the manufacturer he worked for was making people redundant every year as processes became more automated).

      The second automation revolution will hit white collar working class jobs and it’ll be AI + being able to do stuff via the internet. Instead of calling say Sky or Virgin to cancel your TV as you used to you’ll login and then interact with an AI chatbot (you might even be able to do that now).

    3. somnamna2516 on

      I use AI a lot in my day to day coding . It’s pretty crap at solving shit if you don’t have a clue what you want in the first place, and gives a fair bit of erroneous info (typically deprecated methods over rank hallucinatory) but it certainly speeds up the process of banging out boilerplate and simple UI. can see the threat it poses to grad / junior jobs.

    4. Zealousideal_Top9939 on

      It’s improving extremely fast.

      People in these threads always post in a way that makes it sound like technology is static and won’t improve. Google seems quite confident that they will develop an AGI within the next few decades or even sooner. It’s capabilities will be mind bending.

    5. ArmadilloLoose6699 on

      I think what certain tech bosses overlook is that you still need entry level positions, because experienced & senior tech workers that are needed to monitor & train the AI don’t just spring from a hole in the ground.

      The big shift is that the tech industry is no longer lucrative for newcomers because the chronic decades-long skills shortage is over. All the US multinationals have been doing layoffs & periodic hiring freezes since the pandemic, so things were already bad even before GenAI came along.

    6. Pure-Nose2595 on

      I’m excited to have my shelf-stacking job replaced by a computer that can’t lift anything up or clean up spills, but can hallucinate products that don’t exist.

    7. kindanew22 on

      Great! What a wonderful development. Such a great future for young people.

    8. HaggisAreReal on

      What a CEO says knowing what is that investors want to hear, and reality, usually does not match.

    9. hadawayandshite on

      I don’t know whether to be very worried…or if it’s all marketing by companies:

      We have been ‘10 years away’ from AGI in the 60s, 70s, Musk said it’d happen by 2022…late 2020s seems to be a date several have picked

      Rodney Brooks of MIT thinks AGI is at least 100 years away….and he seems to be the only one who is talking about how complicated human intelligence is

      https://rodneybrooks.com/parallels-between-generative-ai-and-humanoid-robots/

      Edit: is it the AI we should be worried about or the capitalism of companies who are trying to make as much profit as they can

    10. kazabodoo on

      Ok but like, how? I am a software engineer with almost a decade of experience and use various AI tools to give me code and it’s like really accurate sometimes and sometimes it’s just a waste of time.

      I even go out of my way to modify the Top K, Top P parameters and temperature, along with providing highly refined system prompts and still gets things wrong or it hallucinates, I am not sure how it is in other fields but for software development it is good at getting something basic out but it’s not very good at expanding or changing what it produced.

      I think this is just fear mongering and marketing more than anything, I think AI is nowhere near at replacing people. Look at Klarna – laid off so many people so they can automate stuff using AI and it did not work and now they are hiring back now.

    11. Tofru on

      I used copilot all the time for tech related questions and powershell commands. It’s a great tool and helped me a lot. It’s taken the burden off my team as I’m not asking them so many questions as I learn. 

    12. all_about_that_ace on

      There doesn’t seem to be much entry level work left before this. When I look on the jobsites it’s mostly specialists 2-3+ rungs up the career ladder.

      I think we’re going to reach a point where there’s dead-end jobs and very senior and upper management roles and almost nothing in-between. It’ll mean it’s virtually impossible to progress your career through the first few stages and dead end jobs will also be decreasing in numbers while being flooded with applicants that can’t start a career.

      I can’t see a scenario where unemployment doesn’t become crazily high. How are we going to deal with most people not just being temporarily unemployed but virtually unhireable for life.

    13. ScaredyCatUK on

      AI is absolute shite. Half, if not more, of what it ‘knows’ is plain wrong.

      Despite what they might think, someone getting an entry level job is way more capable than any AI.

      You’re going to need to employ more people to fix the AI fuckups than it would have taken to do the job in the first place.

      They’re simply trying to get more cash, more investment.

    14. egg1st on

      All current entry level roles. The new entry level roles will require skills. This is why apprenticeships are going to become a more popular route into work, as it’s focused on getting the people accelerated into a skilled position, jumping over the current entry level positions. If you’re a business that has to pay into the apprenticeship levy, then you’ve already spent most of the cost of having apprentices. A lever the government could use is to increase the apprenticeship levy, which should create more apprenticeship positions.

    15. retz19 on

      And the other half will be outsourced to other countries for pennies/cents on the Pound/Dollar/Euro. Really feel sorry for the younger ones coming up, shits really stacked against them.

    16. ExpandTheBLISS on

      Great, let AI do the tech work and man can go back to farming and living off the land again. Simple living, higher thinking. That’s what we need

    17. xParesh on

      The same was said about the internet 20yrs ago. It didn’t happen. Tech bosses are just hyping up AI to boost their company values. This bubble can’t pop soon enough

    19. Glittering_Ad_134 on

      No it’s not because that mean that you are gonna need ppl to look after the AI,
      AI is clearly not in a state of being left alone doing it thing for now…. really fucking annoyed by those PR stunt.
      AI is failing at the minute because Human have always failed to express what they want and how they want it and anyone in the industry that has work in WaterFall or Agile will tell you how frustrating it is to work with ppl who can’t express themself.

      I’m board of those ppl pushing for a dream of getting richer and fantasm on “look we are totally gonna screw over a generation”

      fucking muppet

    20. PurahsHero on

      “And if you want in on the value created, give me a £600m pre-seed round at £4.5bn valuation for this product that in no way is propped up by hoards of Indian tech workers.”

    21. Substantial-Honey56 on

      Nice, now we just need to totally rewrite how society works and we’ll be set.

      What? We aren’t going to do that?
      We’re going to stagger into a full on dystopia?

      Brill.

    22. mancunian101 on

      Don’t fall for it.

      He’s the CEO of an AI company, of course he is going to try and big up AI services, he wants to boost his companies share price.

    23. Conscious-Cake6284 on

      Just like excel was going to destroy the accounting industry and robots were going to destroy the manufacturing industry. 

      I will believe it when it starts actually happening, till then I’ll assume anyone saying this has a vested interest in promoting ai.

    24. hubmeme on

      Half taken by AI, half taken by cheap foreign labour. Damn I would hate to be a young person in 10 years trying to get a job.

    25. Travel-Barry on

      I remember seeing so many headlines in the years leading up to ChatGPT launching to the public saying that businesses would never use AI to replace their workforce. 

      So many. And so many books. It was like they were trying to soft launch all this. 

      The thing releases and then businesses can’t seem to sack their workforces fast enough. Isn’t it sad that it’s never about enriching and contributing to the country that raised and gave you the opportunities to live successfully — it’s _always_ just about making as much money as possible. Whether it’s a tech startup or a privatised water company. 

    26. No-Scholar4854 on

      Prove it.

      Every time we get the AI salespeople in at work they claim they’ll be able to automate some full workflow. “By the end of the year our new agents will be able to do issue analysis, write the change, test it and deploy it to prod”.

      OK, fine. Prove you can do any of those steps. Just the simplest individual task in that workflow at > 50% accuracy “Oh, no, that would be a waste of time. Just wait for the agents.”

      They’ve got an interesting tech that will make some jobs 10-20% more productive. That’s great.

      But if they admit that then it’ll collapse the insane valuations of their companies. The only way to justify them needing that sort of funding/valuation is if they can keep the AGI hype train going.

    27. lodge28 on

      AI Tax should be introduced. For every role AI takes, in which a person could do, it’s 50% tax per role taken. We have to pay premiums for being more comfortable in life, like paying for extra legroom on a plane.

      Well this is a corpo equivalent of them wanting an easier comfortable life but without paying extra for it.

    28. Wide-Cash1336 on

      Labour’s solution: absolutely pack the country with hundreds of thousands of international students and graduates, making the problem twenty times worse for British graduates. Country is cooked!!!

    29. Boundish91 on

      I can’t wait to never be able to speak to a real person when i call somewhere. It’ll all be AI bots and it will be hopeless to get actual help.

    31. Lostman07 on

      Lol going from ” migrants taking our jobs” to “AI taking our jobs” soon. Meanwhile the rich continue to shaft us and pit us against each other and against progress. The only ones taking our jobs and ruining our standard of living are the rich millionaires and Billionaires.

    32. IntelligentInjury246 on

      Fatima’s job in IT will be taken over by AI (she just doesn’t know it yet).

    33. deicist on

      “Man selling black box of bullshit says black box of bullshit will replace workers if companies give him money”. 

      I am shocked.

    34. kvedia15 on

      Lmao good luck having enough mid level engineers then, how do we get new mid senior engineers if we dont give them a chance to work their way up

    35. Next_Replacement_566 on

      Just an excuse to put people out of work and not pay them. Maximising profits.

    36. Gekkers on

      There is a reason why so many Asian countries still employ people to work over choosing automation. It’s better for society, but again, further evidence politicians either don’t care or are too stupid or are too incompetent. AI is a curse, not a cure

    38. PossibleSmoke8683 on

      I’ve worked in tech for 20 years now and can confirm there is a seismic shift happening . Professional services firms are already investing billions .

      Let me give a really simple example . I’ve been back and forth with a marketing agency on a simple PDF ( every change I request takes a literal week or more) . Very frustrating . And paying a fortune for the privilege.

      The reality is that i could probably now train myself to use an AI platform and generate what I need in a few hours. Many firms are already taking stuff they would outsource, back in house .

      We simply will not use professional services firms in the same way . Massive changes happening.

    39. Nielips on

      I feel like senior leaders don’t realise their jobs that are soft skills only are also up for the chopping block.

    41. Yhcti on

      Trying to find an entry level developer job right now is proving impossible. Working as a sales admin currently and that’s also seemingly impossible to find a position in. Stuck in a company that doesn’t value anything I do and unable to move because the market is completely fucked is honestly soul destroying. If I could afford it I’d quit and take up an electrical course and become a sparky.

    43. Wong-Scot on

      It sucks but this is just another form of industrial revolution.

      We’ve gone from factories to IT and now AI.

      It’ll suck for those who demand conservatism of these industries.
      Be it for tradition or for the work force.

      But its not the choice of the government to dictate if a particular company or industry is competitive or not. It’s the local and global market.

      Subsidies can only get so far ..

      And in a global age, it’s either do or be marked obsolete.

      But in the global age, being marked obsolete is not an individuals issue, it can be a multi generational one.

      And the risk to the income and stability of a country is immense.

    44. Mundane_Baker3669 on

      White collar jobs will be eliminated except for a few like doctors and lawyers.Only blue collar jobs will remain as its really tricky to automate.Take the case of autonomous cars,it’s still not as impressive compare to the feat which is achieved through LLMs.Most of us will be retired by then,so learn new trade skills and driving jobs

    45. thebeardofbeards on

      I had a little insight into this the other day, Did a days of excel/marketing busywork work in 40 mins, Asked copilot to do what I wanted using completely normal language and half of that time was waiting for it to do what I asked it. It even made a mistake and I told it to redo it and explain to me why the mistake was made and what it did to correct it.

      Any phone and web based customer service/IT support is gone completely apart from a few knowledgeable specialists to escalate to and someone to twist the knobs and turn the dials on the AI.

      Massive cuts to so many teams. If you’re in SME/corporate employment and don’t know how to use AI start learning today

    46. duffking on

      > guy with financial incentive to suggest a thing suggests a thing

      Not really surprising.

      Regardless something like this seems inevitable regardless of if the tech is capable of it or not, and it’s baffling that Starmer and other politicians are backing AI so hard without answering the fundamental question of:

      If half the country/world/etc loses their jobs, what happens then? Are we all just meant to fucking starve to death?

      I don’t think this is likely to happen any time soon, for what it’s worth. I think a lot of people are going to *try* it and realise that the tech fundamentally isn’t ready to make that step yet and that most of the companies don’t have a plan for overcoming the tech limitations for what that’s the case yet. Factor in just how expensive this stuff is to run at the moment and the fact that the only way these models are able to keep running at the moment is billions in investor money (that is largely obtained by misrepresenting things to them) – there’s questions of how they’ll actually make it cheaper than a person too.

    47. JDNM on

      What’s even better about all this is AI companies are literally stealing IP such as art, design and music, running it through an algorithm, then spitting it out the other end.

      I wish governments would have the balls to stand up to these f*****g companies and not just allow them to rape, pillage and destroy our way of life so they can sell their AI crap for billions.