Throughout her university career, Jacqueline Silver assumed her computer science degree would guarantee her a job.
Finding out she was wrong was a demoralizing experience.
Silver, who graduated recently from McGill University and now lives in Toronto, spent more than a year applying for hundreds of jobs before finally finding one in her field this month.
“I was really exhausted, and it was also just really discouraging,” said Silver, who noted that several of her classmates have also had trouble finding work.
“It was basically like I was enrolled in a whole separate class because I would go to the library and do my homework for each class and then spend an equal amount of time just applying for jobs.”
She won’t likely be the last to scramble for work. New research shows that the spread of artificial intelligence is already eating into the supply of jobs in multiple fields, including computer science — and it’s hitting young people the hardest.
A recent Stanford University academic paper found that early-career workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations have experienced a decline in employment, while employment for experienced workers and those in less exposed fields has remained stable or continued to grow.
Hamoon Ekhtiari is chief executive officer of FutureFit AI, a Canadian company that uses AI to connect people to jobs. He said the occupations most exposed to AI include junior roles in software development, sales, marketing and customer service.
Ekhtiari said the reality of the impact AI is having on jobs is very complex. “AI will create a bunch of jobs and opportunities and it will impact a bunch of other jobs.”
Silver said generative AI tools like ChatGPT are able to do tasks like writing code “quite well,” which poses a threat to entry-level jobs in her field.
“Maybe you still need someone to tweak it or look at it closely, but overall, you don’t really need that many people to write it anymore because the generative AI can do it,” she said.
Ekhtiari said companies need to think beyond the short term and cultivate young talent. He also said schools need to do a better job of connecting people to skills training and governments need to do more to help people through job transitions.