‘We’ve given them the short end of the stick’: Business school dean says AI could eliminate many jobs for young people—even as they lead innovation

Artificial intelligence has inspired visions of a near-utopian future: cures for cancer, breakthroughs in space, and even a world where money matters less. But the people who will experience that future the most may also be the ones most harmed by it now. Speaking at Fortune’s Workplace Innovation Summit on Wednesday, the dean of innovation and professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business Jeff De Graff admitted young people are increasingly driving the newest forms of innovation—often outside traditional corporate structures. “Look to young people, they’re creating federations of meaning, they’re trying to cure river blindness in these loose affiliations, they’re creating walkways for animals,” he told Fortune C-Suite and Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh. “They’re doing things outside the traditional industrial structure.” Yet despite their desires to transform the world toward a bright future, DeGraff said society has failed to adequately prepare young people for the AI transition. “We’ve sort of given the short end of the stick,” he added in the panel titled What High-Innovation Teams Do Differently. One of the most glaring examples, he said, is how companies are deploying AI: primarily for efficiency. “That’s going to eliminate a lot of opening jobs,” DeGraff said. “It’s going to eliminate a lot of that first staircase for young people, which is concerning.” Rather than fueling breakthrough innovation with young people, he added that much of today’s corporate world has been focused on doing things “better, cheaper, faster.” DeGraff’s warnings come as many early-career workers are already facing a cooling labor market. According to the latest data analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 5.6% of recent college graduates aged 22 to 27 are unemployed, compared with 4.2% across all workers. Moreover, data from early-career hiring platform Handshake found that job postings are down 2% as compared to l