[erehweb]

There are a number of industries where you may need experience to become more productive than AI, but nobody wants to hire you when AI is more productive in the first couple of years. Is there a good equilibrium for this, or does it end up with each company saying "We won't hire the juniors, just the experienced people" and then finding there aren't enough experienced people around?

[kcorbitt]

There are many industries where you need lots of experience before you're a net contributor to productivity. This is true for everything from hairdressers to doctors. We have ways of dealing with this (eg. taking out loans to undergo years of training).

The problem comes if the number of years of experience you need to outperform the frontier AI models advances at more than 1 per year, which is not out of the question.

[scotty79]

I think the solution is the same as it was in previous cases. Extend the education and make it more accessible so you can reach useful skill level before you dirty your hands with commercial work.

In the old times 12 year old could have economic utility. Now 26 year old often has none. It might be that with AI you might need to keep learning till 35 before you can usefully contribute to the economy.

[entuno]

Which leads to the obvious question of: who's footing the bill for this?

Is the taxpayer going to pay for another five or ten years of education for people? Are the young people expected to borrow hundreds of thousands more for training? Are their parents expected to house and feed them for another decade?

[scotty79]

> who's footing the bill for this?

Not who, what. Most of the value in the economy is not produced by humans for a long time already. Most wealth comes from machines. So they need to be footing the bill instead of just lining pockets of people who bought the machines.

[entuno]

This used to be addressed by the fact that people were loyal to companies - so it was in the company's interest to spend years training them up investing in them, with the knowledge that they might get decades of productive work out of them afterwards. One of my grandparents joined a company as an apprentice as 16, got trained by them, and then worked there for 40 years until retirement.

But nowadys with the culture being much more to to repeatedly jump between companies looking for salary increases, there's a lot less incentive to train juniors - because odds are they're just going to get poached or jump ship before that investment has really paid off.

The big companies or startups with VC funding and deep pockets will always be able to hire experienced people - but it's going to become increasingly hard for other people (and particularly public sector and nonprofits) to do so, as the pipeline of juniors -> seniors is being eroded.

[bryanlarsen]

> then worked there for 40 years until retirement.

And what are the odds that any given company is even going to be around for 40 years these days?

[quesera]

> This used to be addressed by the fact that people were loyal to companies

In my observation, employers stopped being loyal to employees long before employees stopped being loyal to employers.

[entuno]

I'm sure you can find plenty of example of both. But TBH, I don't think it really matters which side you try and point the finger at after decades of decline - the point is that the employee/employer relationship has fundamentally changed, and it's hard to see it ever changing back.

[quesera]

Agreed. It's not about blame, just that employers are almost always working with a better perspective and more information.

Business circumstances made it advantageous, and then necessary, to break the social contract.

It might be possible to go back, but I can't imagine any series of events that leads in that direction which doesn't break the global economy in the process.

[smithjacky]

That's such a valid concern, and I think it applies across many industries — including home decor and interior design. While AI tools can suggest layouts or color palettes instantly, what really matters is human intuition, creativity, and an understanding of client emotions something that only comes with real-world experience.

At smithinteriors, we often balance AI-driven tools with hands-on creative insights. But we also believe in giving junior designers a chance to learn and grow, because without mentorship and opportunity, there’ll never be enough experienced professionals in the future. It’s all about creating an environment where AI supports human creativity, not replaces it.

[immibis]

Perhaps by juniors banding together and making new startups which outcompete the dinosaurs - a tale as old as time (or tech startup capitalism, anyway, so since the 1990s).