The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis - Is AI Already Shrinking Entry-Level Tech Jobs?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today on the AI Daily Brief is AI already eating entry-level tech jobs? Before that in the headlines, Anthropic gets voice mode. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Thanks to today's sponsors, blitzie.com, super intelligent, and plum, and to get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com slash AI Daily Brief. Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines edition, all the daily AI news you need in around five minutes. kicking off today with some new feature news, Anthropic has released their long-awaited voice mode.

Starting point is 00:00:36 Now, the feature itself isn't all that interesting. It allows users to speak to Claude and receive audio responses. Claude's voice is pretty easy to listen to. It doesn't sound too robotic, but it also doesn't go in the other direction to add vocal ticks in an attempt to pass as human. There are five different voice options if you don't happen to like the British accented default.

Starting point is 00:00:55 Maybe more interesting is how Anthropic is presenting the feature. Their launch video demonstrates how to use Claude as an agentic voice assistant. The user asks Claude to check on her schedule in the morning by accessing her calendar and then email a coworker to prepare some materials for the first meeting of the day. Now, there are, of course, a ton of different ways to use voice mode. If you are a regular chat GPT user, you will probably have already found some. But it is interesting that Anthropic is pushing this sort of vision of it as a step closer to a full assistant.

Starting point is 00:01:25 It is worth noting that voice mode is a little hungry on the usage limits, Anthropics says that free users can expect 20 to 30 conversations. In addition to that, tool use features like accessing a calendar or email are only available to paid subscribers. On launch, the feature is also only available through the Clod app rather than through the web interface or API. So will this push people to use Clod instead of other options? Or is this just table stakes now?

Starting point is 00:01:50 In either case, glad to see this feature available and excited to play around with it. Meanwhile, over at Meta, that company is splitting their AI division in two in hopes of accelerating their efforts in the AI race. Axios reports based on an internal memo sent yesterday that the Gen AI division will now be divided into an AI products team and an AGI Foundation's unit. The AI products team will be led by Connor Hayes, who is currently the VP of Gen AI. This team will have ownership of meta-AI, AI studio, along with all in-app tools. The AGI Foundation's unit will be co-led by Ahmad al-Daleh and Amir Frankl, who will work on bigger picture efforts including improving the Foundation Lama models. The fundamental AI research or Fair

Starting point is 00:02:31 Lab will continue to be an entirely separate division, although one team working on multimedia will move to the AGI Foundation's unit. The restructuring memo was sent by Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, who's taken an increasingly important role in setting the course for META's AI strategy. Axios reports that no executives are leaving as part of the restructuring nor are any jobs being cut. However, META is moving across some key leaders from other parts of the company. Business Insider recently reported that Meta had experienced a brain drain to faster moving open source AI companies like Mistral, with Axios writing, Meta hopes that splitting a single large organization into smaller teams will speed product

Starting point is 00:03:05 development and give the company more flexibility as it adds additional technical leaders. A direct quote from Cox's memo said, Our new structure aims to give each org more ownership while making explicit team dependencies. According to the information, the restructuring will mean more than two dozen leaders have responsibility for various parts of the company's AI strategy. For the last six months, the narrative has very much. been meta in panic. Even before that, though, back in 2023, we saw one reorg of AI at Meta, with the Lama project removed from the Fair Lab and put into the hands of the then-nuly-formed

Starting point is 00:03:35 Gen AI team. Interestingly, this new restructuring seems to be going in the complete opposite direction of Google, who late last year consolidated most of its AI teams under DeepMind, ensuring that product teams work directly with the research division. CEO Sundar Pichai even emphasized this strategy at last week's Google I.O. conference with the core theme being about bringing AI from research to reality, their words. Still, it's not insane to me why meta would take this move. If you're trying to move fast, organizational bloat can be one of the big killers. So maybe by having smaller, more nimble efforts, they'll be able to move more quickly. Ultimately, it's very hard to know what's going on exactly inside companies. And what is absolutely true is that when pushed comes to shove, all that will

Starting point is 00:04:17 matter as how well the changes work. Lastly today, OpenAI is exploring ways for users to sign into third-party apps using their chat-GBT account. Yesterday, the company put out an expression of interest looking for developers interested in integrating these features into their own apps. The form contemplates partnering with apps with as few as 1,000 users, right up to those with user bases over 100 million. OpenAI was also interested in knowing how the apps charge for their AI features and whether

Starting point is 00:04:43 they're using OpenAI APIs. Earlier this month, OpenAI launched a preview of the feature. for developers through the Codex CLI. They offered free API credits to incentivize developers to connect their chat GPT accounts to their API accounts. This could be a very simple attempt to get more accurate user data, weeding out the double counting, but most think that this is about something far larger. Nick Dobos posted, bigger deal than people are realizing.

Starting point is 00:05:06 Sign in with ChatchipT is about to be everywhere. Now, so far, signing in with an existing account has been mostly the domain of the tech giants. The bargain is a convenient credential management. for app developers in exchange for basic user data. Sam Altman is certainly interested in this angle. In fact, he's been talking about sign-in with OpenAI as a feature since at least late 2023. His World Coin Crypto Project is also about unified credentialing based on biometrics.

Starting point is 00:05:31 But this also could be an even bigger play. Jonas Templestine writes, has original Facebook platform vibes. Bring your API token, bring your GPs, bring your memories, bring your tools, etc. Something to watch for sure, but for now, that is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief Headlines edition. Next up, the main episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Blitzy,

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Starting point is 00:08:41 Serve twice the clients in half the time with Plum. Sign up today at useplum.com. That's us E-L-U-M-B-D-com forward slash NLW. Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief. One of the most important discussions that we track here is the way in which AI is impacting jobs. And a lot of this so far has been theoretical. But the deeper into AI we get, the more we have a chance to actually see how it's impacting things in real life. And in a new research report, data-driven VC firm Signal Fire believes that they are starting to see the first signs of AI's impact. on hiring. The report is called the State of Talent Report 2025. It's based on a platform they've built called Beacon, which tracks over 650 million professionals and 80 million organizations. What they've found is fairly dramatic. Entry-level hiring, they say, is collapsing, and a generational

Starting point is 00:09:31 hiring shift is leaving new graduates behind. Signalfire writes, The tech world has long been synonymous with innovation, break-neck growth, and boundless opportunities. The door to tech once swung wide open for new grads. Today, it's barely cracked. The industry's obsession with hiring bright-eyed grads right out of college is colliding with new realities. Smaller funding rounds, shrinking teams, fewer new grad programs, and the rise of AI. And really what's interesting here is that we're starting to see a bit of a separation from just the post-COVID reversion to the mean and the lean years after the big boom years during that period. You might remember this crazy chart that was flying around of software engineering job postings

Starting point is 00:10:10 on indeed. Many people were sharing just between 2022 and 2025 when there was more than a 70% drop-off, but if you zoom back out, we actually just saw a reversion to the pre-pandemic mean. Now, however, we're starting to see impacts that seem to not just be about larger macro effects. Even as the market recovered, there has been a sharp divide between senior-level hires and entry-level hires. Between 2023 and 2024, every demographic, with two years of experience or more, saw a big increase in both startups, but especially in big tech, but there was a massive decline in entry-level hiring. In big tech, for example, entry-level hiring was down 25% in 2024. If you zoom farther back, new grad hiring is down over 50% from pre-pendemic levels in 2019.

Starting point is 00:11:00 That's for big tech. New hires of grads were down 11% for last year and down over 30% from their pre-pendemic. pandemic levels in 2019. The total percentage of hires that were entry level has about halved for both of these categories. And what's more, this is a trend beyond tech. Data from the Reserve Bank of New York shows that the unemployment rate for recent college grads is rising much faster than young workers in general over the past year. Recent grads currently have a 5.8% unemployment rate as compared to 4% for the overall population. This is the highest unemployment rate for new grads dating back to 2013, ignoring the pandemic.

Starting point is 00:11:36 also the first instance of new grad unemployment data trending up over a multi-year period since the data series began in 1990. Data from the Law School Admissions Council found applications for 2025 were up roughly 21% compared to last year, which is a common trend during recessions. Basically, putting off workplace entry by going to law school tends to be more attractive when job opportunities are slim. Now, Signal Fire does point out that there are more potential explanations for this than just AI. They write, the bigger driver may be the end of the free money, madness driven by low interest rates that we saw in 2020 and 2022, along with the overhiring and inflation it led to. Now, with tighter budgets and shorter runways, companies are hiring

Starting point is 00:12:15 leaner and later. Carter data shows that series A tech startups are 20% smaller than they were in 2020. And yet at the same time, they do think that AI is part of the story. They continue, the shift isn't just about hiring less. It's a hiring reset. As AI tools take over more routine entry-level tasks, companies are prioritizing roles that deliver high-leverage technical output. Big Tech is doubling down on machine learning and data engineering, while non-technical functions like recruiting, product, and sales keep shrinking, making it especially tough for Gen Z and early career talent to break in. According to their data, only around 70% of computer science grads from the class of 24 found employment within six months. And only 61% of those were employed

Starting point is 00:12:56 as engineers, with just 12% finding positions at Mag 7 companies. Each of those numbers are down significantly from recent years and at or near a five-year low. The World Economic Forum Futures of Job Report also recently found that the issues for young grads goes beyond the tech sector. They wrote, Are entry-level jobs on the way out? For decades, entry-level roles have provided essential training grounds for newcomers to step into the world of work. From finance to journalism, junior staff have traditionally handled the grunt work as a right of passage as much as a development opportunity. But as AI reshapes the career ladder, these early entry points could be increasingly at risk. According to the WEF survey, 40% of employers plan to reduce their workforce in areas

Starting point is 00:13:36 where AI can automate tasks. Business Insider recently wrote that the number of entry-level positions in consulting and finance are down, with, quote, several big firms considering offering lower salaries, reasoning that AI would take on some of the workload. A recent report from hiring lab found that 49% of Gen Z job hunters believe AI has reduced the value of their college education. Still, the World Economic Forum didn't think it was all doom and gloom. They wrote, Gen AI could democratize access to jobs, making it easier to build the technical knowledge and skills that have historically excluded otherwise qualified workers. Rather than eliminating entry-level opportunities altogether, companies could harness AI to train the next generation of senior

Starting point is 00:14:14 professionals, from law firms saying goodbye to the billable hour to more emphasis on apprenticeships, traditional structures could be redefined. As Gen AI becomes further embedded in the workplace, companies will need to invest in substantial upskilling efforts to prepare their employees for the AI-driven economy. Still, what I think that we're experiencing is an example of how challenging transitional periods can be. If you are a regular listener to this show,

Starting point is 00:14:37 you'll know that I am net bullish on how all of this shakes out. I think that AI is going to bring massive disruption to the way that we work. I think almost everyone's job in terms of the things we spend our time on actually looks pretty different in five years. I think that the market absorbs a huge amount

Starting point is 00:14:55 of talent that would have otherwise been absorbed into these big companies, in new and interesting ways. But that doesn't mean that it's not going to be extraordinarily painful along the way. And what's more, it's not even as simple as whether people get replaced or not. There's also the question of what jobs look like. In response to a post from Aaron Francis that read, I think the appetite for software is nearly infinite. I've been using AI to extensively write code and yet the number of things I still need to code is increased, not decreased. It's like we added three lanes to the highway and still have traffic. And again, this is

Starting point is 00:15:25 my base case for optimism. Cal Irvine responds, that's why I always thought the AI will replace developer jobs narrative is kind of silly, like software products would just be finished if only we had the manpower. If that's true, then surely the tech giants would be finished by now. We aren't going to lose our jobs, we're just going to do more. This question of more is another serious one. The New York Times recently wrote a piece titled, At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work. Three Amazon engineers told the newspaper that, quote, managers had increasingly pushed them to use AI in their work over the past year. The engineer said that the company had raised output goals and had become less forgiving about deadlines. It has even encouraged

Starting point is 00:16:02 coders to gin up new AI productivity tools at an upcoming hackathon. One Amazon engineer said his team was roughly half the size it had been last year, but it was expected to produce roughly the same amount of code by using AI. A labor economist at Harvard said, things look like a speed up for knowledge workers. There's a sense that the employer can pile on more stuff. One of the things that employees and companies will have to negotiate is how to distribute the benefits of the productivity gains from AI. If it's purely to double or triple the expected output of each worker, it seems pretty likely to cause problems. But there are obviously more ways to come at it than just that. And this, I think, gets back to a conversation that we have pretty regularly here, which is the

Starting point is 00:16:41 need for leadership. The impact of AI for an employee base runs a wide spectrum from dehumanizing to rehumanizing, where companies fall is going to largely be based on leadership. decisions, and not only decisions but articulations of those decisions and engagement with employees to get their buy-in. Without that engagement, you're going to see more and more combativeness expressed, for example, in this battle between Politico's newsroom and its management over the use of AI. So I think for me, the takeaway is not that we should all be frantic, but it is to recognize that we're starting to get a clear view into some of the challenges that come with AI. One that appears to be emerging is the early career mentorship gap. If no one hires

Starting point is 00:17:21 entry-level workers, we're going to lose an entire generation that never has the chance to train up, unless, of course, we design something different for them. Certainly my response reading this is to think about how I and my companies could scoop up talent that might not previously have been available. But whatever the case, it's a good reminder that no matter how bullish we are, the transition is going to be messy, and we need to go into it with clear eyes. For now, though, that's going to do it for today's AID Daily Brief. Thanks for listening or watching, as always. And until next time, peace. Thank you.

The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis - Is AI Already Shrinking Entry-Level Tech Jobs?

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