The rise of AI is being celebrated as inevitable “progress,” but look closer and you’ll see the hollowing out beneath our feet. Entry-level jobs, apprenticeships, the first rungs on the ladder—these are being stripped away in the name of efficiency.
That might not sting if you’re already sitting comfortably in the middle or upper layers of your career, but systems don’t work that way. Remove the foundation and the structure collapses.
We’ve seen this story before in the natural world. Climate change, pesticides, habitat loss—the small and fragile go first. Insects, plankton, pollinators. They’re easy to dismiss as insignificant. But those so-called “expendables” are what hold the larger system together. Without them, the food chain collapses. Plants fail. Birds vanish. Entire ecosystems destabilize because we forgot that strength comes from interdependence, not from the top alone.
AI is playing out the same ecological collapse in human terms. By erasing the early-career ecosystem, we’re starving industries of growth, mentorship, and succession. A workforce without entry points is like an environment without pollinators—it may look stable for a while, but it’s already in decline.
Here’s the hard truth: you can’t just prune a system from the bottom up and expect it to thrive. What’s left becomes brittle, incapable of renewal, and one bad season—or one disruptive shift—can topple it entirely.
So what do we do about it?
- For leaders: Don’t be shortsighted. Efficiency isn’t sustainability. Protect the early rungs of the ladder, even if automation makes them look “redundant.” Create apprenticeships, mentorships, and hybrid roles where human learning and AI tools coexist. If you hollow out the entry level today, you won’t have a middle or senior tier tomorrow.
- For workers and ICs: Advocate for pathways in your organizations. Mentor newer colleagues. Speak up when teams cut the roles that used to serve as training grounds. Even if you’ve already “made it,” your future stability depends on fresh talent entering the system. No one is truly insulated when the base layers crumble.
Progress is only progress if it sustains the whole system, not just the top layer. The lesson from both ecology and economy is simple: a chain without its foundation will eventually break.
