‘AI isn’t replacing one skill’: Ajay Bagga warns of massive disruption to white collar jobs

The latest advances in artificial intelligence are no longer confined to research labs. They are beginning to reshape the foundations of white-collar employment — particularly at the entry level. 

From drafting reports and analysing spreadsheets to writing code and handling customer queries, tasks that once formed the backbone of junior roles are increasingly being performed by AI systems developed by companies such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. 

What was initially framed as a productivity boost is now being viewed by some experts as a structural shift in how knowledge work itself is organised. 

Market veteran Ajay Bagga recently flagged the scale of the disruption in a post on X (formerly Twitter), citing warnings from within the AI industry. 

“Dario Amodei, who is probably the most safety-focused CEO in the AI industry, has publicly predicted that AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. And many people in the industry think he’s being conservative,” Bagga wrote. 

“Given what the latest models can do, the capability for massive disruption could be here by the end of this year. It’ll take some time to ripple through the economy, but the underlying ability is arriving now.” 

According to Bagga, this technological wave differs fundamentally from previous episodes of automation. 

“AI isn’t replacing one specific skill. It’s a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously,” he said. 

“When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn’t leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it’s improving at that too.” 

Different kind of automation 

Earlier technological shifts tended to replace defined functions or industries. AI, by contrast, is targeting cognitive tasks across sectors at once. 

Entry-level analysts, paralegals, junior programmers, content writers and frontline customer-support staff — roles traditionally built on repetition, documentation and structured problem-solving — are particularly exposed. AI tools can now summarise legal briefs, generate financial models, draft marketing campaigns and produce functional software code in seconds. 

The change is already influencing hiring strategies. Instead of recruiting large cohorts of fresh graduates, many firms are equipping smaller teams with AI tools that dramatically amplify output. 

In this new model, the entry-level professional is expected to validate AI-generated work, integrate automated workflows and apply judgment — not simply execute instructions. 

Disruption may arrive suddenly 

Bagga warned that the transition may not be gradual. 

“The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from ‘helpful tool’ to ‘does my job better than I do’, is the experience everyone else is about to have,” he wrote. 

“Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service — not in 10 years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less.” 

Investor sentiment already reflects this anxiety. According to Bagga, markets recently erased nearly $1 trillion in software-sector value within a week as investors recalibrated expectations around AI-driven productivity gains, workforce reductions and shifting margins. 

The apprenticeship problem 

Beyond immediate job losses, economists and business leaders are grappling with a deeper structural concern: the erosion of entry-level roles as training grounds. 

For decades, junior positions functioned as apprenticeships where employees learned through repetition before advancing to higher-value responsibilities. If AI absorbs much of that foundational work, the pipeline that produces future managers, specialists and partners could narrow. 

Not all professions face equal risk. Roles requiring negotiation, relationship management, ethical judgment and regulatory accountability remain harder to automate. But the volume of routine cognitive work — long the gateway into these careers — is clearly under pressure. 

A new survival skillset 

For young professionals, adaptation is becoming urgent. Fluency in AI tools is rapidly turning into a baseline requirement rather than a niche advantage. Equally important is the ability to interpret, question and refine machine-generated outputs. 

Judgment, synthesis and communication — capabilities once expected to develop over years on the job — may now be prerequisites for getting hired at all.