Should AI Replace Entry Level Skill?

Date Posted: April 21, 2026

Posted In: Discussion,

“Find, develop, and support good people, and they in turn will find, develop, and own good ideas.”
-Bob Iger, CEO, Disney

by Jared Peno, Managing Partner/CEO, Alliance Technologies

Are we being short-sighted?

Fortune reports 16,000 net monthly job losses attributable to AI in 2026, with total AI-linked displacement between 55,000 and 120,000.

Freelance earnings are down 22% (Upwork). McKinsey’s Q1 update shows 300K+ white-collar job losses in 2025 alone: paralegals down 18%, financial analysts down 22%, copywriters down 30%.

The hardest-hit segment isn’t senior leaders, it’s entry-level roles.

Soooo…. The people that are moving on AI right now are going for the “easy wins”. Entry-level and low skill jobs are being replaced at a much faster pace.

It looks good on a balance sheet, but is it good for your company’s future?

Unintended Consequences

The battle is just starting. In a recent new release, we see that young people are pushing back on AI, because of the fear of being replaced.

Nearly a third of workers admit to sabotaging their company’s AI strategy

“Some employees who are fed up with AI are refusing to use the tech, while others are feeding sensitive company information to unapproved AI tools.”
Fast Company |Ella Chakaria

Beyond this clear revolt against the promise of being better and faster. People everywhere understand the nature of what’s going on. AI rapidly being taught to replace humans. This is seen in the medical field along with the factory workers in India, who wear headsets to record their sewing technique so they can use the video to train AI robots to do the same work.

The question is this… Is our desire to create cheap products and services blinding us from the social and other far reaching effects that can happen in our business and our economy?

If entry level workers are being replaced with AI, then the next wave of skilled labor will simply be the machines we used to replace them. Companies understand that they must keep well experienced senior leaders because they have leadership and skills obtained that only a vast amount of time under tension can create. When those perspectives are replaced, what are we left with? Are we comfortable with the experience and “professional opinion” of the AI machine that has been doing the work for the last 10 years?

CIOs Can Help to Navigate

This is where CIO’s are really going to be important in the coming months and years. Navigating through an AI revolution is a tightrope of technical and political hazards. On the one-hand you must keep your business competitive with all the disruptive technologies and the start-ups that don’t have to deal with an existing labor force and on the other hand, you are left with a labor force that is skeptical and even flat resistant to your efforts of AI adoption.

In both of these scenarios the CIO has to weigh the risks of their actions or inactions.

The CIO is now dead center in the moral and technological strategy of the company and how it affects the broader economy.

While CIOs are going to feel the pressure of AI adoption at all costs, their work is going to lie in the data that isn’t screaming at them. How do they analyze the social impact and how do they model the next generation of productivity and financial success?

These are important perspectives as we move forward with AI advancements and adoption into our daily lives. Never before has the role of the CIO been so important for moral and technical leadership.

P.S. – Thinking about the quote from Bob Iger, I wonder who the next generation of leaders will be? Some of the most important leaders in society have refined their skills through difficulty, uncertainty, and resourcefulness. If our bet is on AI, who will we look up to?

About the Author

Jared Peno brings more than 15 years of experience guiding technology decisions that shape business outcomes. As founder of Alliance Technologies, he has led hundreds of IT assessments and worked closely with leaders navigating technology responsibilities they were not originally prepared to manage.

Read more of his columns at JaredPeno.com.