Email
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
Link<\/p>\n
Las Vegas
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n The president of Cisco rejects the doomsday warnings from some tech leaders that artificial intelligence will make entry-level jobs vanish.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI just refuse to believe that humans are going to be obsolete. It just seems like it\u2019s an absurd concept,\u201d Jeetu Patel, who\u2019s also the chief product officer at AI infrastructure company Cisco, told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n While Patel acknowledged there will be \u201cgrowing pains where people will get disrupted,\u201d he strongly pushed back on Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei\u2019s comments saying AI will spike unemployment to as high as 20%<\/a> and eliminate half of all white-collar entry level jobs.\n <\/p>\n \n He\u2019s one of several tech leaders that have pushed back on Amodei\u2019s narrative; others have said<\/a> AI is likely to change jobs by requiring workers to adopt new skills rather than wiping out jobs completely. Still, his comments come amid a plunge in entry-level hiring and as tech giants are increasingly using AI in the workplace, raising questions about the future of work.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cDario is a friend. We are investors in Anthropic. I have a ton of respect for what he\u2019s done. In this area though, I have a slightly different opinion on a couple of different dimensions,\u201d Patel said Wednesday at Ai4, an AI conference in Las Vegas. \u201cI reject the notion that humans are going to be obsolete in like five years, that we\u2019re not going to have anything to do and we\u2019re going to be sitting on the beach\u2026 It doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In particular, Patel said he has a \u201chuge concern\u201d with Amodei\u2019s line of thinking that AI could wipe out entry-level jobs because companies benefit from adding younger workers who often better understand new technologies.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you just say, \u2018I\u2019m going to eradicate all entry-level jobs,\u2019 that\u2019s the stupidest thing a company can do in the long term because what you\u2019ve done is you\u2019ve actually taken away the injection of new perspective,\u201d the Cisco exec said.\n <\/p>\n \n Patel argued that for some jobs, having significant experience can be a \u201cmassive liability.\u201d For instance, he said people often hold assumptions about things that may not have worked five years ago, but do now.\n <\/p>\n \n That\u2019s why Patel said he spends \u201can enormous amount of time\u201d with younger employees and interns.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI learn a lot from people who\u2019ve just gotten out of college because they have a fresh and unique perspective. And that perspective coupled with (my) experience makes magic happen,\u201d Patel said. \u201cIt would be a really bad strategy to not have early in career people and entry level people injected in your workplace.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n However, some economists say there are early signs suggesting AI may already be depressing entry-level jobs.\n <\/p>\n \n Even though the overall job market has been mostly healthy, the Class of 2025 faces the worst job market for new college graduates<\/a> in years.\n <\/p>\n \n For the first time since tracking started in 1980, the unemployment rate for recent graduates (those 22 to 27 years old with at least a bachelor\u2019s degree) is higher than the national unemployment rate, according to Oxford Economics.\n <\/p>\n![\"Jeetu](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gettyimages-1251749092.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gettyimages-2221408004.jpg\")
<\/p>\n