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Boston Globe

‘The frontier is moving': AI is already making it harder for some to find a job

Over the past three years, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has exceeded the overall unemployment rate for the first time, research firm Oxford Economics reported. 'There are signs that entry-level positions are being displaced by artificial intelligence,' the firm wrote in a report in May, noting that grads with programming and other tech degrees seemed to be particularly struggling in the job market. Other factors, including companies cutting back after over-hiring, could also be at play. In June, Anthropic, predicted the technology will eliminate half of all white-collar jobs. Advertisement Brooke DeRenzis, head of the nonprofit National Skills Coalition, has described the arrival of AI in the workforce as a 'jump ball' for the middle class. The tech will create some new jobs, enhance some existing jobs, and eliminate others, but how that will impact ordinary workers is yet to be determined, she said. Government and business leaders need to invest in training programs to teach people how to incorporate AI skills and, at the same time, build a social safety net beyond just unemployment insurance for workers in industries completely displaced by AI, DeRenzis argued. Advertisement 'We can shape a society that supports our workforce in adapting to an AI economy in a way that can actually grow our middle class,' DeRenzis said. 'One of the potential risks is we could see inequality widen … if we are not fully investing in people's ability to work alongside AI.' Still, even the latest AI apps are riddled with mistakes and unable to fully replace human workers at many tasks. Less than three years after ChatGPT burst on the scene, researchers say there is a long way to go before anyone can definitively predict how the technology will affect employment, according to Morgan Frank, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies the impact of AI in jobs. He says pronouncements from tech CEOs could just be scapegoating as they need to make layoffs because of over-hiring during the pandemic. 'There's not a lot of evidence that there's a huge disaster pending, but there are signs that people entering the workforce to do these kinds of jobs right now don't have the same opportunity they had in the past,' he said. 'The way AI operates and the way that people use it is constantly shifting, and we're just in this transitory period…. The frontier is moving.' Aaron Pressman can be reached at