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When it comes to explaining how AI is changing entry-level work, Jeff Crume, an adjunct professor of cybersecurity at North Carolina State University, who has spent more than four decades in the IT industry, says there are two ways to look at it.
“The negative side would be that AI is doing a lot of the entry-level work that we saw in the past and displacing that,” Crume explains.
“However, the positive side is that AI is now making entry-level jobs higher-level jobs. It’s like everyone got a promotion. Now, instead of doing grunt work, entry-level workers are doing more thoughtful work because AI is being used to do the mundane, repetitive tasks.”
He believes that smart companies will take advantage of AI’s capabilities, while others will see it as a way to reduce their workforce.
“Smart organizations understand that you don’t cut your way to the top. You don’t grow by shrinking; you grow by getting larger,” Crume says.
“Companies looking to grow can’t cut the number of employees they have. They grow by making better use of the people they have. In fact, they may need more people.”
Jobs that are very repetitive, that don’t require creative thought, judgement, or critical thinking, are ones positioned to be replaced by AI.
“However, some jobs won’t get replaced because AI simply can’t do them,” Crume adds.
“Some of them involve work in the real world. AI can’t repair your car; a mechanic needs to do that. Maybe we’ll have robots do that one day, but that’s a long way off. There are some things that will continue on as service-level jobs. When we go to a restaurant, we might want the personal interaction or we might want the bedside manner of a doctor.”
Other jobs—such as prompt engineering—are being created to maximize AI. However, this might be fleeting because as AI improves, companies might not need experts in prompt language or programming language.
“For companies that are leveraging AI, there will be numerous jobs created that no one has dreamed of because they have this new set of tools available now and because things that used to be prohibitively expensive now will be almost trivially cheap,” Crume notes.
“AI is going to be able to do some things so cheaply that, with all the extra time, companies will be able to explore new lines of business. Organizations need to be nimble.”
Critical Thinkers, Lifelong Learners Wanted
To thrive in this near-future workplace, college students will need to possess strong adaptability and flexibility skills because advances are not only coming quickly, they are also going in new directions.
“If somebody is rigid in their expectations of what they want to do in the workplace, it might work or it might not,” Crume says.
“Being able to adapt; running toward the light, not away from or resisting it; and finding ways to contribute in new areas is key. Creativity is also important. AI can generate a lot of ideas, but it can’t decide which are the really good ideas. A critical thinker can identify the best ideas.”
Crume points out that critical thinking will also be important because employees with this skill will be able to determine whether a department or organization should do something just because it can, and what could be the unintended consequences.
“The AI likely will not think through all of these questions. Maybe it gets better in the future and presents those options to us, but where decisions, value judgements, moral judgements, and ethical judgements come into play, we still need humans to do this,” he explains.
Crume adds that being a lifelong learner will be crucial to sustained success in this workforce because the skills will certainly change in the future. Employees need to embrace the change and educate themselves to thrive going forward, while those who resist the change will get left behind.
“Change is the only constant. Students need to embrace the fact that that’s going to be the case. What they majored in, what their career goals were when they started college might not be the same thing they will be doing later,” he says.
Crume speaks from experience. From a young age, he wanted to be a doctor. That changed in high school when he realized that becoming a doctor required years of advanced education, residency, and the like, not to mention a great deal of financial investment.
“Then I put my hands on a keyboard and started doing some programming and I had a change of dreams. I knew it would be computer science for me. I don’t regret that for a second, but I realize the pace of change is faster now, so a student could get halfway through an undergraduate degree and all of sudden realize they need to move into a different space,” Crume says.
“They should be willing to keep learning and looking for where the technology is heading. They shouldn’t look for the jobs of yesterday. Most of the advice they get will be from people driving by looking in the rearview mirror, but the winners will figure out what it will be in the future.”
For now, Crume points out that AI is a dual-use technology, meaning that it can be used for good or for bad.
“There are a lot of great things that can come from AI, which I’m excited about. There are also a lot of bad things that can come from it, which present challenges we need to stand up against. Cybersecurity professionals live for challenges. The bad guys are using AI to try to break into our systems, but we know we can use AI to secure our systems. It’s going to be a question of my AI versus your AI,” he says.
“Even if an organization is not in the cybersecurity business, it will come down to their AI versus their competitor’s AI and who makes the best use of it. Be very aware of what the technology can do and what its limits are. The bottom line is ‘don’t bet against AI.’ It’s risky to make bold statements about things it won’t ever do because so many of those predictions made in the past have been proven wrong. There are things we are always going to need people for, but those things will change over time and we have to be ready to adapt to them.”
