Generation AI

Summary

Podcast Summary: Business Daily – "Generation AI"

Host: Hannah Mullane, BBC World Service
Date: September 14, 2025

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Overview

This episode of Business Daily explores the dramatic impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the job market, with a particular focus on graduates and entry-level roles. As AI permeates the business world, host Hannah Mullane investigates whether young job seekers are being displaced, how industries are adapting, and what this means for the future of work. The episode features perspectives from recent graduates, recruiters, global business leaders, and AI pioneers to shed light on both challenges and emerging opportunities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of the Graduate Job Market

• Setting the Scene:

  • AI is reshaping job prospects for graduates, especially in fields that have traditionally offered abundant entry-level positions.
  • Economic uncertainty, federal cutbacks, and tariff issues further complicate the market.
  • There is a marked decline in the availability of entry-level work, as confirmed by both personal stories and global data.

• Notable Quote:

  • “Entry level positions are, you know, few and far between. And not having any real world experience except for a couple internships under my belt has definitely made it hard because a lot of jobs are asking for, you know, at the very least a year of experience.”
    — Kirby Child, recent graduate (03:10)

2. The Effects of AI on Entry-Level and Graduate Jobs

• Technological Disruption:

  • AI excels at menial, repetitive, and data-based tasks—jobs often filled by new graduates (05:00).
  • Entry-level, white-collar "apprenticeships" could face extinction if AI continues to replace such positions.

• Expert Perspective:

  • “AI is actually very well suited to the kind of early career professional jobs that so many of us started our careers with... That formula is going to change and that could really negatively impact younger workers if we don't do something about it.”
    — Molly Kinder, Brookings Institution (05:00)

• Global Picture:

  • The UK has experienced a 33% drop in graduate jobs, similar declines abound across Europe, while India and South Africa see rising raw numbers but still face oversupply of candidates (06:13).

3. The Recruiter's View: New Expectations and Pipeline Worries

• Changing Demands:

  • Companies no longer want large entry-level teams; the focus is now on fewer, more productive workers enabled by AI.
  • Recruiters expect new grads to be highly skilled with new tech tools, sometimes even more so than seasoned professionals (07:46).

• Pipeline Risks:

  • “If you suddenly cut out... 50 to 60% of those entry level jobs, you're going to stifle that pipeline of rising talent up. And I think at some point we're going to hit a breaking point where that's not going to be feasible.”
    — Chris Brulock, tech recruiter (09:08)

4. Rethinking Training and Education for the AI Era

• Industry Adaptations:

  • Major employers like Infosys are focusing on making graduates into AI-tool experts, but success requires changing not just tools but working methodologies too (12:46).
  • Universities are being called to integrate AI skills and practical usage across curricula.

• Quote:

  • “Just giving an AI tool to a fresher or a graduate will not drive higher productivity and efficiency… We may have to make them good at using some of those tools, also changing the ways of working.”
    — Rafi Tarafdar, CTO, Infosys (12:46)

5. Rethinking Career Choices: Jobs "Safe" from AI

• Advice from the ‘Godfather of AI’:

  • Traditional advice to become a programmer is now questioned; programming is increasingly automated by AI.
  • Manual trades like plumbing are seen as safer bets due to their reliance on dexterity and context (15:03).

• Quote:

  • “Training as a programmer doesn’t look like nearly as good a bet as it used to be… I think plumbing’s actually quite a good bet right now. Probably a better bet than training as a lawyer.”
    — Geoffrey Hinton, AI pioneer (15:03)

6. The Future of Law and Professional Services

• Legal Sector Insights:

  • While routine legal tasks are under threat from AI, complex, client-facing, and judgment-driven roles are expected to persist (16:17).
  • The industry could see more productivity per lawyer rather than a drastic reduction in total jobs. Ongoing uncertainty means conservative hiring in the short term.

• Quotes:

  • “I think your individual lawyer is going to be able to produce more over time. I think hopefully it’s a one plus one equals three type scenario.”
    — Ben Allgrove, Chief Innovation Officer, Baker McKenzie (16:17)
  • “I do think it’s a fair statement to say that we haven’t figured out yet... what the proper shape of legal practice is in three to five years time.”
    — Ben Allgrove (18:38)

7. The Big Picture: Uncertainty and Agility

• Common Thread:
  • Experts agree on the uncertainty of AI’s full long-term impact on jobs.
  • Adaptability, upskilling, and AI literacy appear essential for young professionals moving forward.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | | --------- | -------------------------------------------------- | -------- | | 03:10 | "Entry level positions are, you know, few and far between..." | Kirby Child | | 05:00 | "AI is actually very well suited to the kind of early career professional jobs..." | Molly Kinder | | 07:46 | "They don't want to hire 10 engineers, they want to hire one engineer and they want that one engineer to be 10 times more productive..." | Chris Brulock | | 09:08 | "If you suddenly cut out... 50 to 60% of those entry level jobs, you're going to stifle that pipeline of rising talent up..." | Chris Brulock | | 12:46 | "Just giving an AI tool to a fresher or a graduate will not drive higher productivity and efficiency..." | Rafi Tarafdar | | 15:03 | "Training as a programmer doesn’t look like nearly as good a bet as it used to be… I think plumbing’s actually quite a good bet right now." | Geoffrey Hinton | | 16:17 | "I think your individual lawyer is going to be able to produce more over time..." | Ben Allgrove | | 18:38 | "We haven’t figured out yet... what the proper shape of legal practice is in three to five years time." | Ben Allgrove |

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:11-02:32] — Introduction & the dilemma facing recent graduates
• [03:10-04:18] — Graduate experience: job hunting in 2025
• [05:00-06:13] — Expert insight: AI’s suitability for entry-level jobs
• [06:13-07:26] — International graduate job market trends (AI search findings)
• [07:26-09:08] — Recruiter's evolving expectations and pipeline concerns
• [12:46-14:42] — Infosys on upskilling graduates for AI-centric futures
• [15:03-15:53] — Geoffrey Hinton on the shifting value of career choices
• [16:17-18:38] — Legal industry’s adaptation to AI and impact on new roles

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Conclusion

The episode underscores that AI is transforming the landscape for graduates and entry-level workers worldwide, accelerating some long-standing trends while introducing new uncertainties. While routine jobs are increasingly automated, the value of adaptability, continuous learning, and AI proficiency is higher than ever. Career advice is shifting; roles that rely on human dexterity and nuanced judgment are safer for now. The future remains uncertain, but staying informed and agile is the best strategy for the next generation entering the workforce.

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For more on this series, listen to Business Daily via the BBC World Service.

Transcript

[BBC Podcast Announcer]

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[SAP Concur Representative]

Hey, let's talk about your expense report.

[Chris Brulock]

I didn't submit an expense report.

[SAP Concur Representative]

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[Chris Brulock]

What are you talking about?

[SAP Concur Representative]

SAP Concur uses advanced AI to audit and automatically detect out of policy expenses. It's the breakthrough I needed to focus more on our future.

[Chris Brulock]

These are my future expenses?

[Hannah Mullane]

Yes.

[SAP Concur Representative]

And self defense classes are out of policy.

[Chris Brulock]

I'll need self defense classes.

[SAP Concur Representative]

You will?

[Kirby Child]

For what?

[SAP Concur Representative]

It's a big dog.

[Chris Brulock]

SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster. Learn [e-mail] the imperative for businesses has never been clearer.

[Ben Allgrove]

The age of experimentation is over.

[Chris Brulock]

We're talking transformation and winning at scale from AI that actually drives roi. We are going through that curve of understanding what the technology really can and cannot do to turning reams of data into real competitive advantage.

[Hannah Mullane]

A lot of these successful companies, they treat data as a product.

[Chris Brulock]

I'm Chip Klanixel, host of Resilient Edge, the Smart Executive's guide to implementing and sustaining Change. Paid and presented by Deloitte of Available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Hannah Mullane]

Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Mullane. All this week we're looking at how artificial intelligence, or AI is changing the business world. And today we're focusing on a topic close to all our hearts. Jobs.

[Chris Brulock]

They don't want to hire 10 engineers, they want to hire one engineer and they want that unengineer to be 10 times more productive. This is a totally different trend than, you know, 10 years ago or five years ago and then we're not going to hire as many people.

[Hannah Mullane]

Artificial intelligence is transforming the job market, especially for graduates and entry level workers. A group that experts predict will bear the brunt of AI driven job losses.

[Molly Kinder]

The sort of lower stakes, less interpersonal, the kind of spreadsheets and drafts and documents that so many of us kind of cut our teeth in our careers doing. That's the kind of stuff that AI is increasingly really good at.

[Hannah Mullane]

As graduates enter one of the toughest job markets in decades, we'll explore how much of that is due to AI and we'll speak to businesses about the changes they're seeing and what the future of work might look like. That's all coming up on this episode of Business Daily.

[Kirby Child]

I'm a recent graduate from Lehigh University. I studied journalism, so graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. I initially went into school knowing that I wanted to pursue journalism because I did it all throughout high school. And Lehigh has an award winning student newspaper that I knew I wanted to be involved in. Since day one.

[Hannah Mullane]

Kirby child had a strong vision. She knew the job she wanted and what she needed to study to get it. Well, she thought she did. Kirby graduated in May and has moved back in with her parents while she looks for a job. And it's been harder than she expected.

[Kirby Child]

It's not ideal. I think that, you know, it's always difficult for recent grads. Entry level positions are, you know, few and far between. And not having any real world experience except for a couple internships under my belt has definitely made it hard because a lot of jobs are asking for, you know, at the very least a year of experience.

[Hannah Mullane]

Kirby's right. It's always daunting at the start. I can still remember leaving university and feeling like I had a massive challenge ahead of me, applying for jobs and trying to get my foot in the door. But does AI now play a big part in that difficulty?

[Kirby Child]

I think that there are fewer entry level jobs. I think that part of that could be attributed to AI just because, you know, copywriter, copy editor, things like that. I think those jobs are few and far between compared to past years. I would say it's a little bit of a worry for me. I think that journalism in general has the capacity to be impacted that at the entry level by AI, But I'm hoping that I graduated a few years ahead of that before that becomes a big problem.

[Hannah Mullane]

Kirby is from the US and she's not the only graduate struggling.

[Chris Brulock]

The unemployment rate for new college grads.

[Hannah Mullane]

Has recently surged, and some economists say.

[Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Announcer]

Businesses are now replacing entry level jobs with artificial intelligence.

[Hannah Mullane]

The class of 2025 is entering a job market shaken by federal cutbacks, uncertainty over tariff policy. I'm going to throw AI in there too.

[Chris Brulock]

The Associated Press says that the unemployment.

[Ben Allgrove]

Rate for degree holders ages 22 to.

[Chris Brulock]

27 has reached its highest level in a dozen years.

[Hannah Mullane]

It's a topic that Molly kinder, research associate at the US think tank Brookings, has been looking into. She thinks artificial intelligence is having an impact on the data.

[Molly Kinder]

AI is actually very well suited to the kind of early career professional jobs that so many of us started our careers with. The sort of lower stakes, less interpersonal, the kind of spreadsheets and drafts and documents that so many of us kind of cut our teeth, teeth in our careers doing. That's the kind of stuff that AI is increasingly really good at. And so I think there's a growing concern that AI has the potential to kind of lob off the work at the bottom of the career ladder for white collar work doesn't necessarily mean all early career workers lose their job or lose opportunity. The hope is that they'll just be able to do more senior work with AI. But I think there's a real risk that this sort of informal white collar apprentices apprenticeship where young people coming out of college have a degree but they have no idea what they're doing in the workplace and they start by doing a few years of lower stakes, more repetitive work at their computer. I think that formula is going to change and that could really negatively impact younger workers if we don't do something about it.

[Hannah Mullane]

And this isn't a problem unique to America. So I thought I'd use some AI myself to do some research on what the graduate jobs market is like around the world. Okay, so I'm going to open up Microsoft's copilot. Let's ask are graduate jobs declining around the world? And see what that brings up. Okay, so copilot says yes, they are declining and they've given me a global breakdown which is very useful. First up, the UK the number of graduate jobs is down 33%, the lowest level in seven years. That's according to the job site. Indeed Europe seeing similar levels of decline between 24 and 26%. And the article linked here highlights Germany, France and Poland as countries that are seeing the biggest hit to graduate jobs. The search also says that India and South Africa have seen a big increase in the number of grad jobs in the last year, up 85% and 45% respectively. But that the number of graduates far exceeds the jobs available. So still experiencing the same problem. AI research like this is useful, but we know it's not perfect. So with that in mind, I wanted to speak to a recruiter. Are they seeing AI have an impact?

[Chris Brulock]

My name is Chris Brulock. I live in Toronto. I co founded a software recruiting company and that has been my life for the last five years.

[Hannah Mullane]

Chris is responsible for recruiting people for tech jobs all over Canada and he says he's seen a change in the past year in what hiring managers are looking for.

[Chris Brulock]

They don't want to hire 10 engineers, they want to hire one engineer and they want that one engineer to be 10 times more productive because they're using these tools so heavily. This is a totally different trend than what was going on with Google. Only hiring the very best ten years ago or five years ago because they wanted to hire geniuses that would be 10x productive. Now they're Saying we want regular developers to be 10x productive because they're using these tools so heavily and then we're not going to hire as many people.

[Hannah Mullane]

So what about graduate roles? Are you seeing that they're being impacted more than others?

[Chris Brulock]

I think it's hard to give a definitive answer on that when you separate the economy out of it. I think entry level people have always been very sensitive to market kind of conditions and right now I think it's hard to say is it the economy or is it AI that's affecting entry level folks? Right. I think it makes it a little bit harder now because there is that expectation that entry level people are more up to date on all the new tech. A 10 year or senior software developer who's been working kind of in the trenches for 10 to 15 years, they're not as expected to be as up to date, paradoxically, but somebody who had a university, they're supposed to know everything.

[Hannah Mullane]

And how do you see this playing out in the future? How much of an impact is AI going to have, do you think?

[Chris Brulock]

You know, our field is, it's a pyramid, right? You have thousand graduates with no experience. They get work, they work for two or three years and then eventually over the course of 15 or 20 years in a person's career, they're at the top of that pyramid and they're mentoring five people and those people mentor five people. And so like that knowledge and that experience of the business will filter down. But you know, what you get from the other direction is that, you know, the very top people do rise up to these senior roles. Right? Like that's traditionally how career growth works. Right. So you have top engineers becoming staff engineers, principal engineers, director of engineering. If you suddenly cut out, you know, 50 to 60% of those entry level jobs, you're going to stifle that pipeline of rising talent up. And I think at some point we're going to hit a breaking point where that's not going to be feasible. Like our industry can't sustain that.

[Hannah Mullane]

There's still hope for graduates. Then when the industry realizes it's stifling its pipeline of talent, maybe companies will think twice about how much they let AI take over. There's certainly a balance to be struck in Chris's mind. You're listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service.

[Chris Brulock]

I love ravioli. Since when do you speak Italian?

[SAP Concur Representative]

Since we partnered with SAP Concur. Their integrated travel and expense platform and breakthrough solutions with AI gave me time back to dive into our financial future. We expand into Europe in 2027. So I'm getting ready.

[Chris Brulock]

Well, you can predict the future?

[SAP Concur Representative]

I can predict you'll like that message.

[Hannah Mullane]

What message?

[Chris Brulock]

Oh, hey, we all got bonuses.

[SAP Concur Representative]

You can save for college now.

[Chris Brulock]

I don't have kids.

[Ben Allgrove]

Hmm.

[Chris Brulock]

You don't say SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster.

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[Hannah Mullane]

I'm Hannah Mullane and today we're looking at how AI is having an impact on jobs. Many experts in the field tell us graduate jobs are going to be impacted more than any other job when it comes to AI because artificial intelligence is getting really good at doing a lot of those menial tasks, the more routine things that entry level workers typically do. With that in mind, should we be training our graduates differently, preparing them better for the future? It's a question I put to Rafi Tarafda, Chief Technical Officer at Infosys, India's second largest IT company. They hire between 15 and 20,000 new graduates each year.

[Rafi Tarafdar]

So the way we are looking at Infosys is can we take these graduates and make them experts at using AI tools? We are thinking if we can take them, make them an expert in using AI tools, then they will be able to do a lot more work. So if we can turn them into AI tool experts, then I think the need will still be there. And we did some experiments where what we found is just giving an AI tool to a fresher or a graduate will not drive higher productivity and efficiency. So what we then said is we may have to make them good at using some of those tools, also changing the ways of working because if I give them an AI tool and still tell them to do the traditional way that you would do. Without AI, then it doesn't work. I have to start thinking about the prompts that I need to write and how do I structure this and all that. So the ways of working also have to change.

[Hannah Mullane]

The graduate market is so competitive in India. You have so many students going to university, getting great degrees. Do you find that those graduates are coming to you and they're still not ready for the kinds of jobs you need them to do?

[Ben Allgrove]

Yeah.

[Rafi Tarafdar]

I think universities will now also have to start integrating a lot of the AI tools into the curriculum and in the ways of working. I see in universities, students are already using it for research. Right? Students are already using it for learning. But then how do we make it integral into each of the courses? How can they be good consumers of AI so that they can become experts at it? Second, how can they create new AI? Because what we have done today is only some of it with these large language models. But the potential of what we can done is much higher. Once they join the workforce, they may still require some training and some enablement, but at least a lot of foundational thing would have been done.

[Hannah Mullane]

Better training is one thing, but should graduates be considering completely different career paths now that AI is going to be such a big part of our working lives? Geoffrey Hinton is known as the godfather of AI for his work on artificial neural networks, which is basically AI technology inspired by neurons in the brain getting computers to analyze data better than humans can.

[BBC Podcast Announcer]

There's certain things that used to be a very good bet, like learn to do computer programming because you can always get a well paid job as a programmer. That's no longer the case. Already AI is helping programmers so much that people like Microsoft think that soon most programs will be written by AI. So training as a programmer doesn't look like nearly as good a bet as it used to be. AI is lagging far behind people in manual dexterity. And if you're a plumber, particularly one who works on old houses where nothing's quite square and the pipes are weird and you have to get into funny, awkward places, I think it'll be a while before AI can do that. So training as a plumber I think is actually quite a good bet right now. Probably a better bet than training as a lawyer.

[Hannah Mullane]

Law is an area where AI is expected to have a big impact. In fact, many law firms have been working on artificial intelligence models to make them more efficient for a number of years already. Ben Allgrove is The chief innovation officer at Baker McKenzie, a law firm that operates in 48 countries around the world. After that comment from Jeffrey, I had to ask him what he thought about training as a lawyer. Is it still worth it?

[Ben Allgrove]

What I would say is you need to look at the legal industry as a very complex beast. Some aspects of it. There are huge opportunities to use this technology to massively increase access to justice or to lower the cost of the law for consumers and your average person on the street. At the more complex end of the spectrum, the big multinational corporates, big cross border, high value matters, I think the AI will do pieces of it. I still think there's going to be plenty of jobs for the lawyers who supervise and have those conversations about them, what to do. Those parts I still think are there. So in my experience, some of my, you know, most successful friends from school are plumbers. And so I think plumbing's always been a good profession to go into. But I still think there's going to be a role for lawyers. You know, I think it's an uncertain time, there will be winners and losers. But actually I think it's quite an exciting time to reshape an industry which I think was struggling to deliver what clients needed, to be perfectly frank, for probably the last 20 years. I'm one of the ones who doesn't think that this technology is going to lead to a huge reduction in the number of lawyers out there. I think it's going to be, you know, there's an insatiable demand for legal services and the problem the market's had for years is an inability to cost effectively deliver those services. So I still think you're going to see similar numbers of lawyers and I don't think there's going to be huge savings there. I think the lawyers are going to be more productive. So I think your individual lawyer is going to be able to produce more over time. I think hopefully it's a one plus one equals three type scenario. The right technology leads to the ability to do more work and therefore you can get your return on the investment over time. But there will be some adjustments into the way that we structure things, I'm sure.

[Hannah Mullane]

Surely if each lawyer is going to be more productive and each lawyer can do more work, as you say, within their time, you're not going to need as many of them per unit of work.

[Ben Allgrove]

I think that's a fair statement. But you have this sort of insatiable pipe of work. The world's becoming ever more complex and so major corporates, which is the market that we target, you know, have an almost unlimited need for legal services. So I think you'll just have more work being done by some law firms, the winners, by an increasing pool of lawyers for those, those firms that get it right.

[Hannah Mullane]

As for graduate jobs, Ben agrees we're seeing a bigger impact to those roles.

[Ben Allgrove]

Yeah, I think I definitely see it impacting what those graduates do. And I, you know, I do think it's a fair statement to say that we haven't figured out yet, you know, what the proper shape of legal practice is in three to five years time. I think we're still figuring that bit out. So I think you're seeing in the market probably some early moving conservatism around, hiring around those sort of things, assuming there's going to be a big impact. But yeah, I don't think there's been a massive growth in those sorts of graduate roles until people figure out what the implications are for technology.

[Hannah Mullane]

Whilst many experts in AI have made very dramatic statements about huge numbers of jobs being lost to artificial intelligence, there are others like Ben who say the change will be much less severe. The reality is we just don't know the true impact that AI is going to have. You ask anyone working in the field about how it's going to affect jobs in five years time and most will say that nobody can truly be sure. What we do know is artificial intelligence will play a part in many jobs. So if you've got years of your working life ahead of you, or maybe you're a fresh graduate looking for work, having an understanding of AI and learning how to use those tools is certainly going to help. That's all from this episode of Business Daily, produced and presented by me, Hannah Mullane. Tomorrow we'll hear about the race to build AI infrastructure and the widening gap between those that have it and those that don't. If you'd like to hear more from our series on AI and how it's impacting the business world, just search for Business Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

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