New grads' harsh reality check after years of relying on ChatGPT
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It used to be "C's get degrees." Nowadays, it's "ChatGPT gets degrees."
Soon-to-be college grads benefited from ChatGPT's arrival during their first year. Many spent the better part of four years cheating (or optimizing, depending on who you ask) their way through school.
Their arrival in the workforce now raises a big question: Has using AI to get through college made them prime job candidates, or has it stunted important growth?
BI's Amanda Hoover breaks down whether this new generation's overreliance on AI is a feature or a bug.
Balancing the use of AI without sacrificing valuable experience is a top concern for executives managing junior employees.
Veteran workers can leverage AI while still drawing on years of on-the-job experience. Newcomers might be AI-native, but automating all that work could create a serious blind spot.
College grads might also lose access to the AI tools they've come to rely on.
Why? Cost and compute.
Anthropic caused an uproar when it appeared to increase pricing for its Claude Code tool. The AI giant eventually said it was only an "experiment" for 2% of new sign-ups, but not before Sam Altman and other OpenAI staffers took some shots.
(Anthropic also acknowledged that Claude Code did get worse, but denied "nerfing" it.)
It likely won't be the last AI company to test new pricing models. With a user base hooked on the efficiencies your tech delivers — and bills stacking up — why not raise the price?
It's not just about making more money. The surge of AI agents has also stretched some AI companies to the limit in terms of computing power.
Still, that constraint could create an unexpected upside: a reason to step back from the tech.
Sumeet Chabria, a longtime Wall Street tech executive who now runs the advisory firm ThoughtLinks, recently told me some of the best feedback he got from a client came when he didn't use AI.
Stuck on a plane with no WiFi, Chabria wrote a quick memo summarizing a dense cybersecurity topic in plain English, without AI. He outlined 10 actionable items. The client loved it.
Chabria isn't anti-AI. It's just an example of when humans' critical thinking takes precedence over AI's raw power. Of course, Chabria also has decades of experience in the field, helping him connect those dots.
Fresh grads don't have that benefit. Maybe ChatGPT has some ideas?