From copywriting to customer service, from design to operation, more and more “first jobs” are being swallowed up by models. This is not alarmism, but a reality that is happening. This article will start from front-line observations, analyze how AI is changing the underlying logic of the workplace, reveal the structural challenges faced by young people, and explore how we can break through in this change.
In the summer of 2025, London graduates felt the coolness of autumn earlier than usual. When they flooded the job market with new degree certificates and well-polished resumes, they found that the doors that were originally open for them were closing one by one.
Search results for terms such as junior, assistant, and intern on job boards are becoming thinner at a rate visible to the naked eye.
This is not an alarmist urban legend, but a reality that is happening. According to the latest research from the recruitment website Adzuna, the number of entry-level jobs in the UK has plummeted by a third since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. These positions range from graduate jobs, apprenticeships, internships, and even entry-level positions without degree requirements. Two years seemed to have passed.
This group of young people is the first batch of digital refugees washed ashore by the wave of AI, and when AI begins to take on our most basic and basic mental work, the first job of human career is shattered.
The first job that disappeared
Since the advent of ChatGPT, an epoch-making AI chatbot, the UK’s entry-level job vacancies have decreased by 32%. The proportion of such jobs in the overall job market has also shrunk from 28.9% in 2022 to 25% today.
Data from another recruitment giant, Indeed, corroborates Adzuna: employers are suspending hiring and using artificial intelligence to cut costs, and the number of positions hiring fresh graduates has decreased by 33% compared to last year, making this year the most difficult year for British graduates to find jobs since 2018.
B-end product manager’s ability model and learning improvement
The first challenge faced by B-end product managers is how to correctly analyze and diagnose business problems. This is also the most difficult part, product design knowledge is basically not helpful for this part of the work, if you want to do a good job in business analysis and diagnosis, you must have a solid …
View details >
This is no longer a distant prediction that AI will replace humans in the future, but practical actions that have been written into corporate financial reports and HR recruitment plans. Swedish payments giant Klarna announced that its AI assistant is already capable of handling two-thirds of customer inquiries. IBM has taken a bold stance and used AI to take on hundreds of positions in human resources departments.
Behind these data and business decisions, a model that once supported countless people’s career starts is crumbling.
The bottom of the traditional career development ladder is being emptied. In the past, when a young person entered the workplace, he usually started by sorting out materials, writing basic copywriting, doing data entry, and doing various chores for the corresponding position. Through these seemingly trivial jobs, they become familiar with the industry, make connections, learn skills, and slowly grow into a backbone that can stand on their own.
This logic is effective in both the industrial age and the information age. But the emergence of generative AI, like a super intern who can replicate infinitely, work hard, and be omniscient, has changed all that.
In the past, it took an assistant a day to organize meeting minutes, but AI could complete them in minutes; In the past, it took a junior designer to make dozens of sketches overnight, and AI could generate hundreds of them in half an hour; In the past, it was necessary to have a promotional copy written by a newcomer to the market, but AI can provide countless versions in an instant.
When a piece of software that costs tens of yuan a month can be qualified for a position that used to pay thousands of yuan a month, how will business owners choose? The answer is self-evident.
The first batch of people eliminated by AI are not those senior experts engaged in complex decision-making and deep creation, but precisely those young people who have just stood at the starting line.The AI did not come up to challenge the general at the top of the pyramid, but first drew salaries from the bottom of the pot and dismantled the infantry regiment that formed the base of the tower.
The revolution of efficiency and the rise of superindividuals
It is undoubtedly superficial to simply attribute this change to companies trying to save money. Cost is only an appearance, and behind it is a deeper upheaval in business logic and technological development.
From physical to mental replacement
Looking back at past technological revolutions, whether steam engines, electricity, or computers, the core of which was the extension and replacement of human physical or programmed brain power. Robots in factories replace the repetitive labor of assembly line workers, and computer software in offices replace the calculations and filings of accountants and clerks. These technologies have greatly improved efficiency, but they mainly impact blue-collar and white-collar jobs that can be standardized.
Generative AI, represented by ChatGPT, is the first time in history that technology has begun to affect non-standardized white-collar jobs on a large scale. It imitates not a human arm, but a human cerebral cortex. Writing, programming, designing, analyzing, summarizing, tasks that were once thought to be unique to humans and required creativity and intelligence to complete are now performed by machines with incredible speed and quality.
Today’s office white-collar workers are facing the same technological and economic disruption as manufacturing workers in the 1980s. AI accurately cuts to the basic skills of knowledge workers. The practice ground for basic skills is the junior position.
From crowd tactics to elite strategy
In the past enterprise organizational structure, the talent structure was often pyramid-shaped. A small number of senior executives are responsible for strategic decision-making, a large number of middle managers are responsible for management and execution, while the largest number of low-level employees are responsible for specific and basic work. This model relies on the accumulation and transmission of people. The experience and productivity of a senior employee needs to be amplified by leading several junior employees.
AI breaks this linear relationship. It has become a computing power plug-in and inspiration engine for senior employees. An experienced architect may be able to use AI to complete programming tasks in a day that used to take a team a week to complete; A top marketing expert may be able to manage and optimize hundreds of ad campaigns simultaneously with the help of AI.
Instead of replacing experts, AI has amplified the capabilities of experts like never before, turning them into “10x engineers” or “10x designers”. The efficiency and output of these super individuals armed with AI may far exceed the traditional combination of a senior employee and several junior employees.
As a result, the company found that they no longer needed so many apprentices to give their masters a hand. They need fewer, but more elite experts who know how to navigate AI. The pyramid-shaped talent structure is being pressed into a flatter and more elite pie by AI.
From specialized tools to universal platforms
Why now? Because AI has finally changed from an expensive toy to a cheap platform.
In the past, AI was like a special machine tool customized for specific tasks, which was expensive to develop and had narrow application scenarios, and only a few large companies could afford to play it. The emergence of large language models has turned AI into a universal resource like electricity. It can be easily connected to almost all software and workflows through API interfaces, with low cost and easy deployment.
This democratization of technology allows AI’s capabilities to quickly penetrate every capillary of work. It is no longer the patent of a few scientists, but a tool that every ordinary office worker can open in a browser. The usability and ease of use of technology reached a tipping point, leading to application blowouts and disruptions to old ways of working.
The essence of this efficiency revolution is to liberate humanity from the role of execution and push it to the role of command and judgment. The core of the work is no longer to move the bricks by hand, but to tell the AI where to move the bricks and check whether it is moved correctly.
However, for a young man who has just walked out of the school gate and has not even figured out what the bricks look like, how should they command?When the driving range itself disappears, how will the new generation of players qualify?
Welcome to the brutal future
In the face of the AI-formatted primary job market, panic and complaints are futile. We are at the entrance of a new era, where the old map is no longer valid and the path to the future can only be redrawn.
We must accept a harsh reality: the bar for entry may be permanently raised
In the past, a university diploma plus a few general skills was enough to get you an entry-level job. But in the future, “proficiency in using AI” will no longer be a plus, but a basic requirement like today’s “ability to use Office”. If you don’t know how to collaborate with AI through prompts, how to use AI tools to improve work efficiency, and how to fact-check and optimize AI output, you may not even get an interview.
According to research by PwC, those occupations that are more affected by AI require skill sets to update 66% faster than other occupations. Employees who master AI skills are also 56% higher than ordinary employees. This skills gap and income gap will become the most significant dividing line in the future workplace.
The path of career development will change from a linear ladder to a portfolio
Now that traditional apprenticeships are disappearing, the way young people gain experience must also change. Your first resume in the future may no longer be your internship experience at a certain company, but a series of AI-enabled projects you completed independently or collaboratively.
For example, a student who wants to enter the marketing industry can use AI tools to analyze market trends, generate marketing plans, create advertising videos, and package these results into a complete portfolio during college. This shows employers more than any empty internship certificate that you are capable of navigating the future. The future of job search may become more and more like the model of designers and programmers:Don’t talk about what you’ve done, just show me your work.
The education system may need a strong man’s broken wrist reform
Today’s university education is still largely still imparting knowledge and skills that are most easily replaced by AI. When AI can write papers that meet the requirements in an instant, we are still struggling with whether the student’s essay can pass. While AI can solve most of the routine problems, we are also using standard answers to measure students’ strengths and weaknesses.
In the future, education must shift from the impartation of knowledge to the cultivation of ability. This concept has actually been around for a long time, and countless people have put forward it, but obviously everyone does not pay attention to it, or there is no way to start.
Critical thinking, creativity, complex problem-solving skills, and human-computer interaction skills that collaborate with AI will become the new core of education. What schools need to teach is how to ask the right questions and judge the results, rather than memorizing the correct answers, but obviously this step is both difficult and unrealistic.
Growth still depends on yourself
What AI brings may not be a mild industrial upgrade, but a creative destruction of the labor market. It destroyed some old jobs, especially those at the beginning of their careers, but at the same time, it created a huge demand for entirely new skills.
It is undoubtedly a challenging time for young people who are about to enter or have just entered the workforce, and past experiences are no longer reliable. But the other side of the coin is that they are also the closest generation to new technologies, without historical baggage, and easier to adapt to the new paradigm of human-machine collaboration.
The old door is slowly closing, but next to it, a new door to the AI era has opened. Whether you can find the key and pass through the door will determine the ultimate professional fate of this generation.
There are only two types of people in the future workplace: one is the person who gives instructions to the AI, and the other is the person who executes the AI instructions, and there is no middle ground.
Resources:
UKJobMarketReport UK Job Market Report
https://www.adzuna.co.uk/job-market-report/#section-7
European Times: Is artificial intelligence a pros or a cons? British graduates face their worst job market in seven years
https://www.oushinet.com/static/content/europe/britain/2025-06-26/1387866132114976117.html
PwC: The Fearless Future: 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer
https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/artificial-intelligence/ai-jobs-barometer.html
