{"id":82141,"date":"2025-08-21T08:12:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T08:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/82141\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T08:12:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T08:12:15","slug":"the-bookseller-comment-will-ai-destroy-entry-level-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/82141\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bookseller – Comment – Will AI destroy entry-level jobs?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every day you read so much negativity regarding artificial intelligence (AI), such as “job losses due to AI”, “AI will make all our jobs redundant” and most recently, that “entry level jobs will disappear”.<\/p>\n

As someone who has notched up 42 years in publishing, and who has been monitoring job changes within the industry for more than 25 years, I\u2019d like to reassure everyone, that the actual number of roles within the industry that will be completely replaced by AI are few and far between.<\/p>\n

Obviously, certain jobs feel at risk \u2013 translation, ghost writing, pure data processing \u2013 but as we have seen with the introduction of other technology, it always creates bottlenecks elsewhere, it is rarely perfect and there are opportunities to be an overseer or checking that the processes are working.<\/p>\n

There are also many touchpoints within the book-publishing industry that makes it harder for roles to be fully replaced with AI \u2013 the key one being that we are the purveyors of the English language; as publishers we decide how language evolves and shifts.<\/p>\n

While other industries might completely submerge themselves and let the English standards of AI take over their subtitling, press releases and campaign blurbs, are we as publishers going to be happy with our work going out to the same standards? I think not.<\/p>\n

Although the quality of written AI may improve, it will never act precisely and question like a human. As AI is mostly a collection of machine learning, AI does not have the brain to know what is right and what is wrong. Which is why, when relying on AI for fact-checking, it can often spew out incorrect or outdated information. Look at how publishers are already calling some books “AI slop”.<\/p>\n

Eric Huang, deputy programme director of the Masters in Publishing at City University<\/a> reminded me about the time when spell-check software was introduced to most computer programmes. “Remember how everyone said we would never need book editors anymore, and all editors jobs would be made redundant?,” he says. “The use of AI is similar; it might offer an extra or different check, but it will never be precise.”<\/p>\n

Talking to many assistant level staff, it seems the bosses at the top keep saying, “use AI” or “can\u2019t AI do this?”, without actually knowing what AI does or what the quality of the output will be<\/p>\n

Look too at how publishing roles have changed over the years. When I started in book publishing every department had at least one secretary. These secretarial roles evolved into assistant roles, and now every department has at least one assistant, usually held by an entry-level person. The tasks within an assistant role might change, but the role will always be required.<\/p>\n

How AI is being used in roles is another matter, as it is already being used everywhere.<\/p>\n

For those at entry level, it is like giving the assistants an assistant \u2013 someone to do the grunt work, automate the repetitive processes like transforming data, or being used as a sophisticated search engine for creating ideas or making suggestions on how to do a task. For example, in editorial roles, this might mean checking omissions or duplications in complex lists, such as ensuring that every photograph has a copyright credit, or filtering online submissions. In marketing, it is being used to write metadata, create ideas or suggestions for campaigns \u2013 although then the member of staff is using this as a base to supplement their own ideas or work. In publicity, it might be used to draught a press release; in rights for researching different markets. It is also being used as a reason not to ask a line manager; remote working has left assistants having to be fully self-sufficient, running a mini-empire from the comfort of their home.<\/p>\n

Talking to many assistant level staff, it seems the bosses at the top keep saying, “use AI” or “can\u2019t AI do this?”, without actually knowing what AI does or what the quality of the output will be.<\/p>\n

It is as though senior staff have bought into the “AI will replace all jobs” and are quick to reduce the payroll\u2026 whereas the reality is very different. Not least because if you speak to anyone in publishing they are always overworked and probably doing the work of three people. AI could automate parts of that heavy workload. In an entry-level role, that means the assistants might stop doing 80% administration and start having more creative input and being an increased asset to publishing projects. This can only be a good thing.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s stop writing off all jobs as disappearing via AI and start looking at how, by taking the mundane repetitive tasks out of our lives, AI can make us all far more creative and innovative and we can go on discovering and publishing many quality, totally amazing books.<\/p>\n

And if you are in a job right now and feeling you will be left behind, micro-learning is the latest trend. Take 15 minutes of your day to learn something new \u2013 play with the AI in your regular software, teach yourself new AI commands or follow a guided learning programme. This will help you remain relevant and futureproof your career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every day you read so much negativity regarding artificial intelligence (AI), such as “job losses due to AI”,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-82141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}