In finance, entry-level grunt work has long been a rite of passage. Before moving up the career ladder, beginner investment analysts and novice underwriters and auditors first earn their stripes performing the un-glamorous basics: searching documents, preparing presentations, analyzing data and tweaking financial models. Those are tasks that generative AI is increasingly capable of doing itself.
No surprise, then, that earlier this year the New York Times reported that banks were debating cuts to the size of their incoming analyst classes. Similar dynamics could put early career jobs at risk in sectors like law, consulting, media, marketing, technology and the creative industry.
In my work as a researcher at the Brookings Institution, I have interviewed dozens of workers and executives in sectors highly exposed to generative AI, like marketing, engineering, graphic design, academia, law, entertainment, finance and creative industries. I have heard consistent concerns about these potential risks to a wide range of novice workers — including junior professors, freelance illustrators just starting out, novice auditors and underwriters, and staff writers landing their first TV writing roles in Hollywood. In some cases, executives I spoke to said generative AI would enable them to hire fewer junior employees.
Across the white-collar economy, entry-level jobs are suddenly vulnerable to automation because they involve low-stakes assignments of the sort that generative AI is best at. AI could therefore sever the career ladder of industries like finance and law, forcing many would-be bankers and lawyers to look elsewhere for work.
Automating entry-level work could transform the economics and the cultures of those professions, too. Will firms be willing to hire recent graduates purely as apprentices, to watch and learn — even if there isn’t anything immediately useful for them to do? If so, how many? And will the next generation of bankers and lawyers be able to learn what they need to without those late nights full of grunt work?
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