AI is no longer a specialist debate—it’s happening everywhere. Over the last three days alone, it’s a topic that has arisen with a CEO, a financial journalist, and even at a dinner party. Whether in boardrooms or living rooms, AI’s impact on jobs is front and centre—and rightly so.

The default reaction tends to be: ‘AI is coming for our jobs.’ History gives this view credibility—think of the industrial revolution or outsourcing, where machines and automation replaced repetitive work. But just as those shifts freed people to take on higher-value tasks, the story of AI is proving to be more complex.

In the early hype cycle of ChatGPT, headlines predicted lawyers, doctors, developers, and writers would soon be obsolete. Yet those professions are still thriving—though they are evolving as technology augments their work.

So, what’s really happening? A recent study—“Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence” by Stanford economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, and Ruyu Chen—looked at millions of payroll records to understand AI’s real impact. Some of the key findings were:

• Younger workers (22–25) in AI-exposed roles such as IT and customer service are seeing a 13% relative decline in employment.
• Job seekers over 25, with more tacit and experiential skills, are faring better. Quick thinking, problem-solving, and creativity remain hard to automate.
• AI’s displacement risk is greatest for task-based jobs but its potential is highest when used to augment—not replace—human capability.

At EXwise, we see these findings play out daily in the employee experience space. Organisations that succeed with AI are those that:

• Rethink whether a role really needs filling before advertising it—especially if it hasn’t evolved in years.
• Avoid hiring into jobs that are highly repetitive or task-based (which risks high attrition or redundancy).
• Design roles that leverage human creativity and adaptability, while letting AI handle the repetitive tasks.

The bottom line: AI doesn’t have to be a threat to your workforce. Done well, it can free people up to do their best work – a key aspect of a positive employee experience.

At EXwise, we help organisations cut through the noise, redesign work, and build experiences where people and technology thrive together. Get in touch to find out more or just continue the conversation about AI and the future of work – we’d love to hear from you.

Source: https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publications/canaries-in-the-coal-mine/