How Generative AI’s Impact on Learning Curves Will Reshape the Workplace

Generative AI (GenAI) is set to reshape the workforce, redefining career pathways and talent development. However, despite public anxieties about mass displacement, GenAI’s biggest impacts won’t be on the number of jobs so much as on the level of expertise required to do them. For any given role, much depends on the learning curve between entry-level and experienced workers, which determines how knowledge and skills—and the productivity they unlock—accrue over time. AI could create new fast tracks to career entry in some jobs—those that demand mastery of a substantial body of knowledge upfront but which offer fewer opportunities for performance improvement thereafter. In many other fields where expertise grows with tenure, entry-level work may be supplanted by AI with significant consequences for how firms find and develop talent, for how workers get a foothold on the career ladder, and for how organizations are configured.