Welcome to Eye on AI! In this edition…entry-level job loss due to AI breeds uncertainty\u2026OpenAI acquires Statsig for $1.1 billion \u2013 and one of its top executives changes roles\u2026French AI startup Mistral is reportedly finalizing new funding round at $14 billion valuation\u2026is Amazon getting into the AI agent game?<\/p>\n
Life has always been uncertain, but for generations, young college grads could count on one thing: an entry-level job. It wasn\u2019t glamorous\u2014maybe you fetched coffee, made photocopies, or slogged through low-level tasks for little pay\u2014but it gave you a foothold, the first rung of whatever ladder you hoped to climb.<\/p>\n
Now there are signs that, in some industries, that \u201csure thing\u201d is slipping away. A new paper from Stanford University\u2019s Digital Economy Lab<\/a> drew wide attention last week: it found that since late 2022, early-career workers aged 22 to 25 in jobs most exposed to AI automation\u2014like software development and customer service\u2014have seen steep relative declines in employment. The researchers tested other possible explanations, from pandemic-related education setbacks to economy-wide factors like rising interest rates, but concluded that the rise of generative AI was the most likely driver, while noting more data is needed to prove a direct causal link.<\/p>\n There is also a new Harvard study<\/a> which also found that the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 marked a turning point in the labor market From 2015 through mid-2022, hiring was on the rise for both junior and senior roles. But beginning in 2022, entry-level employment stalled and then slipped into decline. According to the study, headcount for early-career roles at AI-adopting firms has fallen 7.7% over six quarters since early 2023. The study also found that senior staff, were largely spared. Employment for more experienced workers has continued its steady climb since 2015, avoiding the downturn hitting their younger colleagues.<\/p>\n A third study<\/a>, carried out by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, did not look at whether younger and older workers were affected differently, but it did examine the link between occupations that had adopted AI most intensively and job losses and found a distinct correlation. The impacts were greatest in occupations that used mathematics and computing intensively, such as software development, and much less in blue collar work and fields such as healthcare that were less prone to being automated with AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n As my colleague Jeremy Kahn said<\/a> in Tuesday\u2019s Eye on AI, none of these studies disentangle the effects of AI from the possible effects of the unwinding of the tech hiring boom that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, he explained, \u201cmany large companies bulked up their software development and IT departments. Major tech firms such as Google, Meta<\/a>, and Microsoft<\/a> hired tens of thousands of new employees, sometimes hiring people before there was even any work for them to do just in order to prevent rivals from snapping up the same coders. Then, when the pandemic ended and it was clear that some ideas, such as Meta\u2019s pivot to the metaverse, were not going to pan out, these same companies laid off tens of thousands of workers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Whatever the reasons, the prospect of post-college unemployment is an uncomfortable place to be\u2014especially for students who thought they could count on steady pipelines into fields like IT or consulting. PwC, for instance, says it plans to recruit a third fewer grads by 2028. Uncertainty, in turn, tends to spread, breeding anxiety\u2014which explains surveys like a recent one<\/a> that found that 60% said they felt pessimistic about their\u00a0career prospects.<\/p>\n Some may tell young people to pivot, persist, or simply pray. But we can\u2019t afford complacency. Society will need these workers one way or another, and that means building real pathways into today\u2019s jobs\u2014and tomorrow\u2019s. What\u2019s happening on the ground to guarantee young people are both prepared for\u2014and included in\u2014the future of work? Opportunity has to exist, even in the face of uncertainty.<\/p>\n Note: Today I published a new deep-dive story<\/a> on Anthropic\u2019s unusual Frontier Red Team \u2014 the group tasked with probing the limits of its top Claude AI models while also shaping how policymakers understand AI\u2019s risks and potential. For this piece, I spoke with Anthropic co-founder and head of policy Jack Clark, had breakfast in Las Vegas with team leader Logan Graham and researcher Keane Lucas, and dug into how this hybrid of security and policy is redefining what \u201cred-teaming\u201d means in AI (and how it could be good for Anthropic\u2019s business). <\/p>\n With that, here\u2019s the rest of the AI news.<\/p>\n Sharon Goldman<\/strong> FORTUNE ON AI<\/p>\n The Google antitrust ruling gives its AI rivals one big reason to cheer<\/a>\u00a0 \u2013 by Jeremy Kahn<\/p>\n Figma is getting crushed in its post-IPO earnings debut; CEO Dylan Field is focused on AI\u2019s long term power to \u2018raise the ceiling\u2019<\/a> \u2013 by Allie Garfinkle<\/p>\n Is an \u2018AI winter\u2019 coming? Here\u2019s what investors and leaders can learn from past AI slumps<\/a> \u2013 by Jeremy Kahn\u00a0<\/p>\n The new thing on campus: Why universities are appointing their first chief AI officers<\/a> \u2013 by John Kell<\/p>\n \u00a0\n<\/p>\n \u00a0\n<\/p>\n AI IN THE NEWS<\/p>\n OpenAI acquires Statsig for $1.1 billion \u2013 plus executive moves. <\/b>OpenAI has snapped up product development startup Statsig in a $1.1 billion deal, according to CNBC<\/a>\u2014the latest move in its acquisition streak following the purchase of Jony Ive\u2019s hardware venture, io. As part of the deal, Statsig CEO Vijaye Raji will join OpenAI as chief technologist for its applications unit, reporting to Fidji Simo, the former Instacart CEO appointed in May to lead OpenAI\u2019s applications business. In addition, OpenAI\u2019s chief product officer, Kevin Weil, announced in a post<\/a> on LinkedIn that he will become VP of a new group called OpenAI for Science, \u201cto build the next great scientific instrument: an AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery.\u201d Weil said he will work closely with Sebastien Bubeck, an OpenAI researcher and the former VP of AI and Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft.<\/p>\n French AI startup Mistral reportedly finalizing new funding round at $14 billion valuation.<\/strong> Bloomberg reported<\/a> that Mistral, the French AI startup founded by former Meta and DeepMind researchers, is finalizing a new funding round that will value the company at $14 billion. Mistral, an OpenAI rival, develops open-source language models, a chatbot tailored to European users called Le Chat, and other AI services for enterprise companies. In March, I interviewed<\/a>\u00a0CEO Arthur Mensch, who denied reports the Paris-based startup is planning an IPO but highlighted its growth and a renewed focus on open-source AI to compete with China\u2019s DeepSeek. Many argue Mistral is benefitting from not just the capabilities of its models, but also from geopolitical tailwinds. European countries, and France in particular, are increasingly talking about the need for \u201csovereign AI\u201d that would enable them to escape dependency on U.S. or Chinese AI systems.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Is Amazon getting into the AI agent game?<\/strong> Amazon, which far better known for its AWS cloud computing division than for big moves in enterprise software, is testing new agentic,\u00a0AI-powered workspace software called Quick Suite, according to internal documents viewed by Business Insider<\/a>. Quick Suite empowers “every business user to make better decisions, faster, and act on them swiftly by unifying Al agents for business insights, deep research, and automation into a single experience,” said one of the confidential documents. According to the reporting, several companies have been given a private preview of the new technology, and Amazon recently sent out invitations for an internal beta test, which said: “With over 40% of business users expected to adopt Al-enhanced work environments soon, AWS is positioned to lead this shift by providing integrated solutions that help organizations \u2014 including our own \u2014 effectively deploy and scale Al agents in the workplace.”\u00a0<\/p>\n AI CALENDAR<\/p>\n Sept. 8-10:<\/strong> Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Park City, Utah. Apply to attend\u00a0here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Oct. 6-10:<\/strong>\u00a0World\u00a0AI\u00a0Week, Amsterdam\n<\/p>\n Oct. 21-22:<\/strong>\u00a0TedAI San Francisco. Apply to attend\u00a0here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Dec. 2-7:<\/strong>\u00a0NeurIPS, San Diego\n<\/p>\n Dec. 8-9:\u00a0<\/strong>Fortune Brainstorm\u00a0AI\u00a0San Francisco. Apply to attend\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n EYE ON AI NUMBERS30%<\/p>\n
sharon.goldman@fortune.com<\/a>
@sharongoldman<\/a><\/p>\n