AI could cause a white collar ice age

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We're witnessing a catastrophic false economy being created right before our eyes. Companies are freezing graduate hiring while waiting for AI productivity gains that haven't materialised yet. Nevertheless, half of UK firms plan to shift spending from staff to AI systems. This is happening, it is very real, and quite frankly, it's frightening.

Here's the issue. The "drudge work" we're so eager to automate is how people learn. Those entry-level tasks teach judgement, build context, and develop the domain expertise that makes technology useful. Strip them out and you don't get a smarter workforce – you hollow it out.

Now in some ways AI is incredibly useful. But there is a risk that over-exuberance over the benefits of AI forgets about the risks to our existing workers.

CHART 1 • AI could cause a white collar ice age

There is a certain irony about the chart below. It was produced by McKinsey. Moreover, it comes from a piece of research that McKinsey produced about this crisis, while the firm is simultaneously deploying its AI platform "Lilli" to replace junior consultant tasks. In a way, McKinsey appears to be simultaneously the arsonist and the fire brigade.

Here's what their research actually tells us: while generic roles are vanishing, positions requiring AI skills are holding steady. The solution isn't to eliminate junior roles – it should be to redesign them. AI fluency should be merged into job descriptions and transform junior developers into AI-augmented builders.

But there is a broader and perhaps more philosophical application here that might work. The winners will be organisations that keep their talent pipelines open while retooling the office. Meanwhile, the losers will wait for AI to solve their talent problems and then wonder why nobody knows how their business actually runs.

There are also plenty of solutions lawmakers can come up with. The government could require mandatory apprenticeship quotas for firms using AI. Tax on productivity gains could be used to fund training programmes. They could even make it illegal to eliminate entire entry-level categories without alternative pathways.

The technology isn't really the problem. Our choices are. We can use AI to amplify human potential or abandon it. But if we keep pretending a chatbot can substitute for human development, we'll discover that technology without judgement is just expensive stupidity.

Source: Bloomberg

If you managed to understand this first chart and its implications, then bravo to you. It took me some time to get my head around what the story was here, which I've tried to share with you. I have four more charts to share with you too. So if you would like to see them then please consider subscribing.

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