Artificial intelligence is reshaping the professional landscape at an extraordinary pace. While many applaud its efficiency and potential to enhance human productivity, a quieter crisis is unfolding: AI is replacing entry-level roles traditionally filled by young professionals, potentially leaving an entire generation without a clear path to expertise.
The Disappearing Rung: How AI Targets Entry-Level Roles
AI is most effective at handling routine, repetitive, high-volume tasks—the very kind often assigned to junior staff or recent graduates. In law firms, medical institutions, financial services, and administrative sectors, this foundational work has long been the stepping-stone for young professionals. Increasingly, however, those tasks are being automated.
In the legal profession, AI tools now review contracts and perform legal research in minutes, replacing what once required teams of junior associates. At Linklaters, for example, commercial contract reviews are performed by AI, reducing cost and time dramatically. Bryan Rotella, a veteran attorney, warns that young legal professionals are missing out on essential early-career experience due to this shift.
Financial services tell a similar story. AI handles data analysis, report generation, and spreadsheet updates with a speed no human can match. Consequently, banks are reducing junior analyst hiring, with some firms considering cutting such roles by two-thirds. Junior roles that once served as a rite of passage on Wall Street are vanishing or transforming into supervisory positions over AI tools.
In sectors like healthcare administration and insurance, AI systems process millions of claims, reducing the need for clerks and coders. For example, Anthem processes over 200 million claims annually with AI, slashing administrative costs and human labor.
Even in psychology, AI chatbots like Woebot and Wysa offer cognitive-behavioral therapy exercises and mood tracking. While not a complete replacement for human therapists, they increasingly handle basic screening and counseling functions, potentially cutting into the training ground for aspiring psychologists.
The Consequences: Immediate Displacement and a Long-Term Talent Gap
The short-term effects are already visible. Globally, AI displaced over 76.000 jobs in the first half of 2025 alone, with 41% of employers planning further reductions due to automation. Entry-level positions are shrinking, and many employers expect new hires to already have advanced skills in AI usage.
This disruption leads to a dangerous bottleneck. Young people need experience to grow, but the jobs that provide that experience are disappearing. As one industry observer aptly put it: “You can just replace juniors with an AI tool”.
Looking to the future, the concern is even greater. If current trends continue, we risk cultivating a gap in senior professionals ten or twenty years from now. The traditional model of gradual skill-building through hands-on experience is crumbling. Mark Minevich, an AI expert, warns of a looming scenario: as today’s seasoned professionals retire, there may be no one adequately trained to replace them.
Case Study: Radiology
Radiology offers a concrete example. In 2016, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton famously suggested we should stop training radiologists, predicting AI would soon surpass them. That hasn’t happened—radiologist jobs have grown, and AI has become an assistive tool rather than a replacement. Still, the fear was enough to dissuade one in six U.S. medical students from pursuing the field. This illustrates how the perception of automation alone can steer talent away from critical fields.
Global Trends: The Evidence of a Structural Shift
These changes are not isolated to specific countries or industries. A 2023 Goldman Sachs report estimated that up to 300 million full-time jobs could be exposed to automation worldwide. The World Economic Forum similarly predicts that AI will both create and eliminate millions of jobs, with entry-level roles most at risk.
Employer intent confirms this: 86% of executives plan to replace some entry-level roles with AI in the near future. Meanwhile, 49% of Gen Z job seekers in the U.S. believe AI has devalued their degrees in the job market. Across the board, the psychological impact is profound. Career paths are shifting, sometimes preemptively, due to fears of obsolescence.
What Can Be Done?
The situation is not hopeless. Solutions are emerging, but they require proactive effort:
- Reinvent Entry-Level Training: Law firms, hospitals, and financial institutions must develop apprenticeship models that combine AI with human mentorship. Instead of replacing junior staff, AI could be used to offload menial tasks while still involving humans in the decision-making process.
- Emphasize Human Skills: Fields like law and psychology rely on empathy, strategic thinking, and ethical judgment—areas where humans outperform machines. Training programs should prioritize these strengths.
- Upskilling: Young professionals can adapt by learning to work with AI tools rather than against them. Data analytics, coding, and AI literacy should become core components of education across all disciplines.
- Policy and Regulation: Governments can incentivize companies to retain and train young workers, perhaps through tax incentives or apprenticeship subsidies. Licensing boards in medicine and law might require supervised, human-reviewed work as part of certification, preserving opportunities for hands-on experience.
Conclusion
Are we losing a generation of specialists due to AI? If current trends continue unchecked, the answer may be yes. Short-term efficiencies gained through automation may lead to long-term deficiencies in expertise across critical sectors. However, this outcome is not inevitable. By redesigning how we train, mentor, and integrate young professionals into an AI-driven world, we can ensure that the next generation is not lost—but instead, better prepared than ever.