Most companies adopt AI as quickly as possible. They are quickly writing emails and other business documents to conduct effective market research and find other ways to increase productivity. Sadly, some people are using it to reduce or replace junior positions, which is a mistake when current employees will use AI to fill the productivity gap.
AI can be used as an amazing productivity tool at all levels in all businesses. Giving all employees access to this powerful technology can bring great benefits, but it is not a replacement for employees. Replacing juniors with AI can be tempting, which may help in the short term, but can have dire long-term consequences. Without training, learning, and promotion to junior employees, we can severely drain our talent pool.
Experience and technology
As a real-world illustration, let me tell you one of the current vice presidents of my company, our sales organization. He has strong technical expertise and eloquence. He understands how to interact with potential customers at any stage of the buyer’s journey. He can skillfully communicate a niche technical topic. And he didn’t get these skills by asking AI chatbots.
After graduating from college, he became a business development representative (BDR) for a technology company. This is an entry-level position that involves setting up meetings for account supervisors and building sales pipelines.
This is one of the work affected by AI. 6Sense’s BDR 2025 research report shows that 70% of BDRs using AI at work think this makes them more productive. BDR requires a lot of basics, such as cold publicity, researching accounts, interacting with clues to the site, qualified new prospects and the prospect of participating in the event. Many of these tasks can be automated.
After 11 months as BDR, the vice president was promoted to account manager and then promoted to director-level position. He is now vice president of the business and corporate sales teams. From his first entry-level job, his experience at the frontline has shaped his current role. He learns first-hand what these junior sales positions need to be successful in interacting with prospects and building pipelines. He is also an account manager, so he understands how to build customer relationships regardless of the size of the business. The concept of on-the-job learning is suitable for anyone who holds a senior position; reaching the upper rung of the ladder requires first letting your hands dirty the details of the character, failures and success.
Employees at any location can use AI to increase their productivity. Organizations should find ways to make workers more productive, but if they use AI instead of junior positions, they will confiscate future talent pools in exchange for short-term financial gains.
To illustrate this further, let’s look at a real example based on a rather boring but necessary topic: a spreadsheet.
Techniques enhanced through experience
For most companies today, achieving their goals requires making the most of their resources, and the most valuable of which is time.
I recently asked our people and cultural leaders to create an organization map outlining how employees at different levels of each organization allocate time. This includes clarity about how employees at different levels of our organization should spend time – for example, how much time individual contributors, managers, directors and vice presidents should spend on tactical projects with strategic projects.
Instead of creating this spreadsheet from scratch, we used AI. I gave Chatgpt a three-sentence tip, which creates an 80% perfect table. Then the magic happens: Our experts draw on her deep HR expertise to make it 100% perfect. Her story is the same as the sales leader mentioned above – for more than a decade, she has the skills to adapt Chatgpt’s general framework to a specific environment in my company and immediately the table is available for immediate use. The next day, I used this table to answer the staff’s questions about what he needed to do.
Before the advent of generating AI, creating such a table would take several days, with multiple iterations and depriving other projects. With AI, it took a few minutes. AI creates a table that is 80% available, but the real-world expertise of our experienced people and culture takes it the last 20%. This seems to be a minority position, but the last 20% is the reason the project goes from kind to greatness.
AI enhances rather than replaces employees
The skills and knowledge required to bring this table to the finish line are through experience and improved in the ranking. Junior roles provide you with critical problem-solving skills, as well as opportunities to make mistakes to shape your vision and pursue success.
How will people become experts if companies replace junior positions with AI? What happens when current leaders work with other companies, become consultants or retire? Next is all your institutional knowledge and culture? When inevitable happens, you need to wait on your wings for the pipeline of talent.
AI can now benefit workers at all levels – but it can never be a substitute for experience-based learning. Instead of knowing how AI can reduce the number of employees, business leaders should consider how to use AI to grow their talent pool faster. Not humans and artificial intelligence – it is humans and artificial intelligence.
