AI's Impact on Junior Workers Raises Concerns Over Future Expertise Development

The debate around artificial intelligence (AI) and employment often centers on job losses, but a quieter issue is emerging: how will workers gain expertise if AI increasingly performs the tasks that junior employees traditionally use to learn their professions? Early-career professionals in knowledge-based fields, such as lawyers, programmers, economists, and analysts, typically develop skills by repeatedly performing foundational tasks like drafting documents, coding, or data analysis. AI now excels at these tasks, potentially reducing opportunities for beginners to gain hands-on experience.

This shift could create a market failure where employers have less incentive to invest in training junior staff, yet still demand experienced professionals in the future. Professor Einat Albin from the Hebrew University has noted this dilemma in the high-tech sector, questioning where tomorrow's senior experts will come from if fewer juniors are hired today.

Dr. Gadi Perel, research coordinator at the Federman Cyber Security Research Center at Hebrew University, emphasizes that training for an AI-driven world must go beyond teaching young workers to use new tools. Instead, foundational professional knowledge remains crucial so individuals can critically assess AI outputs and identify errors. At Hebrew University's Faculty of Law, the approach combines AI tool training with deep legal analysis and independent reasoning to prepare students for this reality.

Addressing this challenge requires more than academia; employers must rethink how to provide juniors with experience, possibly by deliberately assigning tasks that AI can do but are essential for learning. The broader question is not only which jobs AI will replace, but what skills and knowledge we risk losing when AI performs work previously done by humans.