The president and chief product officer of Cisco, Jeetu Patel, has openly criticized alarming forecasts about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the job market, particularly entry-level positions. Speaking at the Ai4 Conference in Las Vegas, Patel countered claims made by Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, that AI could lead to a staggering 20% unemployment rate and eliminate half of all white-collar entry-level jobs.
Patel expressed his disbelief over the notion that humans would become obsolete due to AI advancements. “I just refuse to believe that humans are going to be obsolete. It just seems like it’s an absurd concept,” he stated. While acknowledging potential disruption in the workforce, he emphasized that companies benefit significantly from integrating younger workers who are more adept at new technologies.
Patel labeled the idea of eradicating entry-level jobs as “the stupidest thing a company can do in the long term.” He believes that such a move would eliminate fresh perspectives crucial for innovation. “If you just say, ‘I’m going to eradicate all entry-level jobs,’ you’re actually taking away the injection of new perspective,” he warned.
Concerns Over Entry-Level Job Market
Despite Patel’s optimistic stance, recent data suggests a troubling trend for entry-level job seekers. According to Oxford Economics, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates aged 22 to 27 is now higher than the national average for the first time since tracking began in 1980. This demographic faces significant challenges in a job market that has seen entry-level hiring plummet by 23% from March 2020 to May 2025, surpassing the 18% decline in overall hiring during the same period, as reported by LinkedIn.
Some economists attribute this decline partly to AI’s growing role in the workplace, particularly in industries like computer science and mathematics, where employment for recent graduates has fallen by 8% since 2022. “AI is definitely displacing some of these lower-level jobs,” noted Matthew Martin, a senior US economist at Oxford Economics, in an interview with CNN.
AI’s Impact on Job Dynamics
As AI continues to evolve, its influence on job roles is becoming more pronounced. Alan Ranger, vice president of marketing at Cognigy, remarked that roles involving repetitive tasks, such as data entry, are particularly susceptible to automation. “The less interesting clerical jobs will go away. They will be automated. And if you don’t automate, you’ll go out of business,” he stated. Cognigy has developed AI agents that support customer service operations for companies like Lufthansa, highlighting the technology’s ability to handle complex situations efficiently.
Despite the automation trend, Ranger believes that jobs requiring human oversight, such as account management and sales, will remain secure for the immediate future. “An AI can’t buy you a steak dinner,” he quipped, emphasizing the irreplaceable value of human interaction in certain roles.
Patel concluded by urging the tech industry to take responsibility for ensuring a smooth transition into this new era of AI. He stressed the importance of retraining and reskilling initiatives in collaboration with governments and educational institutions. “The tech community has to actually take some responsibility for this,” he said. “If we don’t, you will create some level of pain in society, and we want to make sure we avoid that.”
As the dialogue around AI’s impact on employment continues, the insights from industry leaders like Patel and the data from trusted economic sources will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of work.
