How AI Could Keep Young Workers From Getting the Skills They Need

Whenever people talk about the dangers AI holds for the workforce, they usually have one thing in mind: technology stealing jobs. But artificial intelligence poses a much more subtle threat than that—one that will have consequences for business unless we address it.

Simply put, the way we’re handling AI is keeping young workers from learning skills.

For more than 12 years, I have been studying how work changes as a result of intelligent technologies like robots and AI. Across a number of industries, I’ve seen the same thing over and over: This new, sophisticated technology makes it easier for experts to do their jobs. Seasoned surgeons can operate more quickly and efficiently, for instance, when they use robots in the operating room.

But the efficiency comes at a cost. The technology allows experts to do more, independently, so they don’t need younger, less-experienced workers to help them out anymore—so those novices are left without mentors to teach them the skills they need to do their job. Looking at operating rooms again, it takes two people to perform most complex procedures with traditional tools. The senior surgeon generally provides “exposure” by retracting tissue while the resident does what most of us think of as surgery—incisions, suturing and so on. Residents are on task the entire time. Focused. Learning.

Now the residents mostly sit around during operations and watch veteran surgeons get the job done thanks to help from a robot. Limited work. Limited learning.

As learning opportunities like these are lost throughout more industries, the results could be profound for both individual workers and the economy. We are sacrificing skill building and human bonds of mentoring on the altar of productivity. No matter our role, tenure, occupation or industry, if we can’t collaborate with someone who knows more, we’re not going to learn effectively, and we won’t be able to keep up. And our organisations will struggle where they might otherwise race ahead—because workers won’t have the deep knowledge they need to innovate and step into senior roles.

Turning history on its head

We have decades of research showing that this situation is the opposite of what we want. We build skill by collaborating across the expert/novice divide, so novices get to see the work, help out at the edges and earn the privilege of doing more next time.

Now that mechanism is being lost. My observations, combined with primary data from other field researchers, show a destructive dynamic at work, across a range of industries. In industrial-process engineering, I have seen experts use software to do modeling on their own, instead of involving a junior engineer. In warehousing, I’ve watched area managers rely on dashboard analytics to understand staffing and process flows, instead of uncovering those things collaboratively with less-experienced line leads and workers.

My collaborator Callen Anthony at New York University found that junior investment-banking analysts were being separated from senior partners as those partners started to use algorithms to help create company valuations for mergers and acquisitions. Junior analysts—instead of collaborating with the senior partners as they had before—essentially just pulled data for the algorithms to use in their valuations.

The rationale for this arrangement was twofold: reduce errors by junior people in sophisticated work and maximise senior partners’ efficiency. Explaining the work to junior staffers pulled partners away from higher-level analysis.

This setup produced short-run productivity improvement, but it moved junior analysts away from challenging, complex work, making it harder for them to learn the entire valuation process and diminishing the firm’s future capability. Junior bankers become senior bankers, after all.

Less time at the table

One of the most striking examples of the widening skill gap is surgery. I observed hundreds of procedures at some of the top teaching hospitals in the country, where robots deeply reshaped how work was done. Surgery, as I said, used to take four hands; minimally invasive surgical robots can supply three, all controllable from a single console. They make things so much easier for surgeons that the million-dollar tools have become the de facto standard for many complex procedures.

Most important, robots make it possible for surgeons to perform operations solo, no residents needed. And, since residents are slower and make more mistakes than an experienced surgeon would, those surgeons are opting to cut residents out of the action. Before, residents might operate for four hours during a 4½-hour procedure. In my nationwide data, their robotic average time hovered in the 10- to 15-minute range. And residents got less operating time in 88% to 92% of cases.

In this situation, we end up with much-less-capable surgeons. My data shows that many newly minted surgeons struggle mightily when they get their first jobs—not just because they don’t have robotic skill, but because their failed quest to learn robotics took so much effort they lost key learning opportunities in other procedures and practice areas, from ureteroscopy to kidney stones to vasectomies, that they would be expected to handle in most new surgical jobs.

The long-term loss

The consequences of poor training go beyond day-to-day competence. Consider what happens to the culture of a hospital when it loses healthy expert/novice collaborations. Less teaching and learning, to be sure, but also more-limited career advancement as experts advocate less for trainees. What about hospitals’ ability to innovate in surgical practices? Limits there, too, as discoveries made by colleagues get tamped down by increasingly focused, efficient, expert-driven surgical performance. The ability to service skyrocketing surgical demand? In the short run, you serve more patients, but in the medium term you scramble to keep up as the pool of new talent dwindles.

Of course, different organisations, industries and professions in different places will feel the pinch on different time scales. They will also compensate in different ways. But in general, organisations will not sense the problem directly: Instead, they will incrementally accumulate a larger cost base—in areas such as (re)training and reduced billable or applied time—and build a bureaucracy to manage this skills gap. At law firms, new attorneys might take longer to ramp up to normal caseloads, while senior attorneys would have to spend more non billable time to handhold them.

Now imagine the consequences of similar skills gap across all types of companies, throughout the economy. Without a firm, immediate correction, this is what we can expect. This is our trillion-dollar skills problem.

A way forward?

Solving the problem is vital, but how should we do it? My collaborator and I found evidence of one approach that can work.

Remember, the problem right now is that senior workers are learning new technologies, such as robotic surgery, that make junior workers unnecessary. In our research, though, we found cases where junior and senior workers teamed up to learn about new technologies together .

By working closely with seniors in this way, the juniors didn’t just learn about the new technologies, they ended up collaborating with seniors on other aspects of the job. Since the older and younger workers were figuring out how the tech worked, they also needed to figure out how to integrate it into vital day-to-day tasks. So, the novices got to see firsthand how those jobs were done while performing actual work.

For instance, in my research, I saw some residents and senior urologists team up to learn robotic techniques in live surgical procedures. In those cases, the residents got much more actual hands-on operating time than residents who mostly just watched robotic procedures—10 times more. And the quality of that time was far better: Expert and novice were jointly figuring out how to use the tech, just as they had a patient on the table.

Granted, this process isn’t easy. In our research, we found that these collaborations often failed. But when they did work, they were powerfully effective. We need more companies to take the chance and implement this strategy, to figure out how to make it most effective and serve as examples.

It will not only help close the skills gap, it will give old and new workers a new sense of purpose on the job—through strengthened relationships. Research shows very clearly that we get motivation for our work when it builds trust and respect with those who share our values. Progressing to more competence therefore involves questions of the heart, like, “Have I earned this expert’s trust and respect?” or “Does this novice look up to me?”

We often treat these issues as unconnected with hard-nosed skill and results, when they are a core part of why we try at all in the first place. They are the animating force for the journey.

Matthew Beane is an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of “ The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines.”

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

How AI Could Keep Young Workers From Getting the Skills They Need

Who will train them? Nobody, unless companies take steps now to eliminate the inevitable skills gap

Turning history on its head

Less time at the table

The long-term loss

A way forward?

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.