AI Kills Jobs Before They’re Born

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just taking jobs. It’s removing the rungs of the ladder that turn rookies into experts. That’s true in Hollywood and increasingly in law, medicine, journalism and finance. The result isn’t just fewer paychecks but fewer people who ever get the chance to become great.

I make a lot of cracks about being polite to ChatGPT, just in case. So hopefully, when the AI overlords finally become self-aware, they’ll remember I said “please” and “thank you” and maybe come for me last. But lately it feels like we’re accelerating our own obsolescence, not waiting for Skynet.

And no, AI doesn’t have to send killer robots back in time to wipe us out. It just has to delete the entry-level jobs that form the pipeline to creative greatness. There’s a real “Terminator problem” in Hollywood, but the machines aren’t killing our heroes; they’re erasing their apprentices before they even get the chance to rise.

AI is different than previous waves of innovation. The steam engine, the assembly line, even the internet all displaced workers but ultimately created new kinds of jobs that required human judgment, creativity or empathy. AI is different because it targets those very traits. In addition to making labor more efficient, it actually makes labor optional. And the disruption won’t unfold over generations like past revolutions; it’s happening in real time, collapsing decades of economic evolution into a few short years.

The truth is that Hollywood’s struggles didn’t start with AI. The industry has been shriveling for years. The streaming bubble popped when subscriber growth slowed, and suddenly studios couldn’t justify runaway spending. Budgets were slashed, mid-budget films disappeared and fewer projects were greenlit. Then came the actors’ and writers’ strikes, which paused production and left thousands of crew members in limbo. Now, consider the ongoing wave of consolidation of studios like Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney and Paramount, and the pie was already shrinking from restructuring and job cuts. As the Wall Street Journal recently put it (subscription required), Los Angeles’ entertainment economy is starting to look like a disaster movie.

AI didn’t cause this downturn. But it compounds it, accelerating the decline and ensuring that entry-level jobs may never come back. Where there might have been a slow rebound as production picked up, AI has swooped in to cover many of the first-rung tasks: compositing, rotoscoping, background fills, rough edits. VFX houses like Technicolor have already laid off hundreds, and more layoffs are coming.

And here’s where it gets darker: AI can only remix what already exists. It doesn’t dream. It doesn’t push boundaries. It doesn’t make bold, new leaps. If we allow human apprenticeships to vanish, we risk stagnating into an endless loop of derivative content.

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Technology isn’t the only culprit. Corporate logic is the engine behind all of this. Earnings pressure and shareholder demands push companies to embrace AI because it looks efficient on paper. Long-term investment in people rarely makes a quarterly report shine.

And this AI job problem isn’t confined to entertainment. It’s happening in law, medicine, finance, architecture, engineering, journalism — you name it. But not every field faces the same cliff. There’s one place where the apprenticeship still happens in real time: live entertainment and sports.

You don’t learn to juggle in front of a keyboard. You learn by dropping, failing, sweating in front of an audience. You don’t master a football spiral by watching YouTube; you practice until your shoulder hurts. These crafts are rooted in physical skill and instinct, which are qualities AI still struggles to replicate. In a world where synthetic content floods our screens, live performance becomes premium. That pipeline still exists, and audiences know the difference.

This is a crisis of possibility. If we let the pathway for creative apprenticeship disappear, we don’t just lose jobs. We lose futures, voices and entire cultural arcs. Industry leaders must commit to rebuilding entry-level zones where talent can learn before market pressures crush them. Unions and guilds need to hold the line, not just for today’s jobs but for tomorrow’s. Cities and communities should support the quirks and independents that keep creativity alive. And as creators, we must double down on presence, on empathy, on the things no algorithm can replicate. That’s how you build durable value, not just efficient output.

Apprenticeship won’t survive if we rely on the altruism of companies to choose the slower or more expensive option. But government and guilds could require studios to maintain real training tracks in exchange for tax credits, permits or collective bargaining agreements. Unions could also reinforce this by negotiating minimum staffing levels in departments most at risk of disappearing, and by building apprenticeship and AI-training programs that every production contributes to.

Cities that rely on film and television work can tie incentives to measurable outcomes, not just dollars spent in the area. Without these sorts of guardrails, market pressure will steer studios toward whatever saves money in the short term, even if it weakens the industry they depend on. With them, at least the next wave of talent gets a chance to grow.

The Terminator rewrote the future by erasing the past. Today, AI isn’t hunting our heroes; it’s erasing their apprentices before they can exist. The bigger danger is letting short-term profits dictate our long-term cultural destiny. If the goal is simply to make the next quarter’s numbers look good, then automating and cutting is the easy answer. But if the goal is culture, originality and progress, then the choice is just as clear: protect the training grounds, take risks on the unknown and invest in the people who will surprise us.

Because in the end, we don’t measure the greatness of an era by its efficiency. We measure it by the originality of the voices that dared to push past what was possible. The machines don’t decide that future. We do, if we choose to look beyond the next earnings call and build the culture we actually want. Otherwise, the last important voices we remember will have been the ones that brought AI to the masses.