If AI Replaces Junior Work, How Do We Develop the Next Generation of Experts

I'm trying to identify a few themes that are kind of running through our conversation. I feel like one, one is it kind of, I keep asking the question, what does it mean to be an expert going forward? And we kind of hit on some different angles of that. And also how does one become an expert? And those two things, I don't know if this is, I don't know if you've thought about it this way, but those feel like those are going to change a lot more. In the next 5 years than they've changed. The way I say it is in the last 25. And I guess the third thing. So what does it mean to become an expert? What does it mean to be an expert? And then what does it mean to be a learning organization? And that's responsible for development of people and that has expertise.

I think the becoming an expert one is probably the one that I lose the most sleep over. Yeah, because I think the deal in certainly in most knowledge-intensive organizations was as a new person, you traded menial labor for knowledge and experience and sort of wisdom. You got to be in the room for the client presentations because you made the slide deck or you were running the slide deck or you were taking notes or whatever it was. But that was in essence how you also gained experience and the sort of wisdom of having seen lots of these things without needing to be the one in charge of the project or anything like that. That deal is gonna be broken now because, or, or not needed anymore because I don't need the intern or the junior associate to make the slides or take the notes or do all of those things. What I worry about is that organizations go, great, so I don't need junior associates anymore, but you need senior associates. And so it reminds me if, if you know the, the comedian, uh, passed away a while ago, but Mitch Hedberg, who did these observational notes, right? He has this joke. He says, hey Mitch, do you want a frozen banana? No, but I want a regular banana later, so yeah. Right? The junior associates are the frozen bananas here, right?

Correct.

You don't want a frozen banana right now 'cause you have AI, right? You don't need a junior associate when you have AI, but you still need a well-seasoned, experienced, senior associate. And I think organizations are missing sometimes that the price they pay for those well-seasoned senior staff is keeping junior staff on for a while. They probably weren't producing worth their value, the value we were paying them already, certainly in kind of high-profile, knowledge-intensive work, right? Juniors at, at a law firm or at a consulting firm, or I would imagine in architecture as well, right? We weren't really ever paying them for the work they were producing 'cause the work they were producing was not of huge strategic value to the organization. Slides, notes, things like that.

Bathroom details is ours, you know, picking up red lights. Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly. So now we outsource that stuff to AI. We're thinking great, we get rid of the expense line of the junior associate, but that never was what they were there for. It was something to keep them busy while we were essentially just growing them into senior staff. We were waiting, we were nurturing, we were mentoring. There's a world in which we really embrace and recognize that and say, okay, great. So now you don't have to make slides, but still come to the meeting and sit and listen. And I don't know what you're gonna do, but I need you to be well experienced in 5 years. So I gotta keep you around for 5 years and give you that experience. I don't know what I get in return for that right now. We gotta come up with a new deal. But just to throw all that out by saying, oh good, well AI can replace the things that they were doing, I think misses the point of what they were doing there in the first place to develop that expertise.