Charmaine and Jennifer – Activity 5
From a professional perspective, as we are both instructors, AI is being integrated into the education and employment sector. Education now has aspects of AI into the curriculum design and employment has incorporated AI into “rising expectations around speed, quality and self-sufficiency” (Bansal, 2026). The selected articles reflect the impacts that AI may have on education and the job market.
Article #1: AI was supposed to destroy jobs. Where’s the carnage?
The article argues AI is reshaping work not by eliminating jobs but by transforming their content, structure, and skills demands. Labour economists like Nicole Bachaud (in Bansal, 2026) emphasize that the workforce is experiencing a “rising bar rather than a shrinking pool,” with a shift from job scarcity to skills-matching. AI is driving a gradual move toward contract and freelance arrangements, consolidating roles, and discouraging new hiring for tasks that can be automated. Robert Seamans categorizes AI’s impact into three groups: jobs made obsolete, jobs created, and jobs changed with the biggest group being the third. This mirrors past technological shifts like computers and the internet. The biggest disruption is qualitative rather than quantitative; the expectations for workers are rising, with 74% of employers viewing AI skills as a strong advantage and 13% requiring them across the entire company, creating pressure for candidates to arrive already practical or advanced on day one.
Article 2: What is really happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality
Author Neale Mahoney dives into a policy brief of whether AI is affecting the labor market. Based on various studies, further research is needed as time is required to determine if AI does in fact impact employment. Below are areas that Mahoney used to base her study on:
1. AI’s impact on the aggregated employment is likely small right now
- According to Neale there is no evidence that AI has caused significant job loss right now.
2. A tough market for recent graduates may be partly due to AI
- In 2022 there has been a decline in hiring entry-level workers in AI-exposed occupations. Impacting younger workers.
3. AI’s impact on worker productivity is mixed but generally positive
- Studies show that AI generally speeds up productivity and completion based on task, context and skill level.
4. Firm adaptation has accelerated but unevenly across the economy
- “AI varies across economies due to methodology and sample composition. Large corporations like to adapt compared to smaller firms” (Mahoney et al., 2026)
5. Early evidence is hardly the last word on AI’s impact
- “Technological advances typically take years, even decades to transform business and labor markets”
What would Clark and Kozma say?
According to Kozma’s (1994) argument, when you combine media with learning, more mental links are made. He would agree that integrating media into education would assist students in the workforce. Kozma (1994) states “we will understand the potential for a relationship between media and learning when we consider it as an interaction between cognitive processes and characteristics of the environment” (p. 8).
The above two articles further Clark’s (1994) stance that although AI was incorporated into the workplace and education, it was neither the result of an increase or decrease in employment or productivity. Clark’s (1994) main argument is that media does not influence learning and believes that instructional methods not media drive learning. As stated by Clark (1994), “media and their attributes influence cost or speed of learning but only the use of adequate instructional methods will influence learning” (p. 27).
AI Disclaimer: We used AI to make sure we were on the right track.
References:
Bansal, V. (2026, August 12). AI was supposed to destroy jobs. Where’s the carnage? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/12/ai-job-destruction
Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 21-29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30218684
Kozma, R. B. (1994). Will media influence learning? reframing the debate. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 7-19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30218683
Mahoney, N., McEntarfer, E., & Wahal, K. (2026, July). What is really happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality. Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/what-really-happening-jobs-separating-ai-hype-reality
