Generative AI is actually a huge win for experienced workers, making them look even better compared to the younger tech-savvy crowd.
SSRN · March 17, 2026 · 6317078
The Takeaway
While we usually assume young 'digital natives' have the edge in new tech, AI automates the technical output (techne) that youth excel at, making the 'contextual judgment' (phronesis) of senior staff the only remaining scarce resource. In sectors with high AI adoption, the ratio of senior-to-junior employment has risen sharply since 2023.
From the abstract
Generative AI compresses the performance gap between average and top cognitive workers by democratising procedural execution (techne). As technical output becomes replicable, scarcity shifts toward contextual judgment (phronesis), generating a seniority-biased technological change that favours experienced workers over younger ones whose technical-fluency advantage is eroded. Yet the effect is self-undermining: automation of entry-level tasks disrupts phronesis acquisition; output replicability e