In 2025 a Global AI Jobs Barometer, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, revealed that, rather than displacing workers, AI raises their value. Analysis of nearly a billion job postings worldwide shows that revenue per employee, in AI exposed industries, is growing three times faster than in others. Wages in these sectors rise at double the pace of other sectors.

The review finds that the percentage of workers with AI skills has surged as the pace of skill evolution in AI-powered roles accelerates. In the employment market AI fluency is becoming a critical asset. 

However, industry leaders warn that one consequence of the explosion of AI in industries is likely to be the erosion of entry-level roles. Antropic CEO Dario Amodel anticpates that up to 50% of white collar entry-level jobs may vanish due to the advance of AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggests that the risk, is not, that workers will loose out to automation, but that they will loose out to colleagues who use AI more effectively.

By way of context the former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever anticipates AI reaching superintelligence within a decade, driving automation and economic acceleration at unprecedented speeds.

In ten years time, students entering secondary education this September will be only 21 years old. So they may be forgiven for thinking that the grown-ups ‘don’t get it’ when they read the latest DfE report on how AI should be used by teachers in education—it’s their education, remember?

The training materials now being distributed to schools suggest that teachers be allowed to use AI to “help automate routine tasks” and the DfE gives them permission to use AI to write routine letters to parents. An example is given of how AI could be used to generate a letter about a head lice outbreak. All suggestions, of course, come plastered with the, now inevitable, list of warnings about the dangers AI and its potential to cheat, obscure and deceive – never its capacity to inspire, achieve and create. This first DfE response to AI in education is to produce guidance to “cut workloads”, freeing teachers from paperwork. Even this seemingly simple task is surrounded by warnings of limited budgets and worrying “big issues”.

No mention, or consideration, of our pupils’ entitlement to a relevant education that will provide them with the digital literacy, knowledge and skills they will need to take their place in an AI-rich and diverse employment market. No expectation that teachers will model those digital skills and encourage students to make good use of them. Just fearful hesitation and suspicion which permeates so much of this debate.

Other research indicates that although six out of ten teachers do not ever use AI, over 90% of students do. Students might be appalled that the grown-ups’ steadfastly keep their heads stuck firmly in the sand.