When the internet first became publicly available, it took seven years to reach 50 million users, said Blake Konzcal, executive director of the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board. It took Facebook a little more than three years to get 50 million people, and Instagram had that size following in just under three years.

But when ChatGPT came online, it took five weeks to reach 50 million users, Konzcal said.

“The pace, the rapidity at which this is occurring is incredible,” Konzcal said.

That means the workforce will have to be prepared for the coming changes, he said.

A widespread adoption of artificial intelligence into the workforce could upend millions of jobs. This year, the World Economic Forum and Stanford released extensive studies attempting to predict how AI will change the workforce in the coming years.

What the Research Shows

Already, Stanford researchers report a 13% decline in employment for early career workers — 22-to-25-year-olds — in entry-level, white-collar jobs, according to a study released Tuesday.

Economists also expect the skills workers prepare for and invest in to change substantially. Over the next five years, the World Economic Forum expects 39% of existing skill sets to be transformed or outdated, it said in its Future of Jobs Report.

At the same time, the economic forum expects 170 million new jobs created worldwide because of AI.

Many young people are abandoning job fields they expect to be obsolete in the future. Educators expect older workers to return to community colleges and universities for new skill training.

So, the job of preparing all ages for the future will fall on colleges as they look at ongoing education and new learning styles to ensure workers remain relevant, Reedley College President Jerry Buckley told GV Wire.

“We’re going to get a lot more adults coming in to retrain. We’re going to get a lot more young people in that traditional 18-to-24-year-old age range who are going to need a different set of skills to the AI discussion,” Buckley said.

“It’s not going to be what it used to be. We’ve got to figure out what those new certificates and degrees are going to look like and that’s actually the kind of conversations taking place at practically every college and university as we speak.”

59% of Workers Will Need New Training: World Economic Forum

Entry-level, white-collar jobs are the most vulnerable, with young people experiencing those cuts first, Stanford reported. In California, business planning company Priority Software expects a 5.6% decline in employment for office clerks, 4.4% decline for first-line supervisors and office workers, and a 5% decline for bookkeepers and accountants by 2033.

Computer science and legal jobs are also under threat. Legal secretaries and legal official work could together lose 20 million jobs over the next years, according to the economic forum.

Computer science graduates also report difficulty finding jobs.

In 2023, AI systems could solve only 4.4% of coding systems, according to Stanford’s study. By the next year, that performance rate increased to 71.7%.

The World Economic Forum breaks it down this way: If the world’s workforce was broken down into 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030. Of those, 29 could be upskilled in their current roles while 19 would need to be redeployed elsewhere.

Those remaining 11 people would have their jobs threatened by the technology, the economic forum reported. Employers told the forum they expect salaries to decline too, as AI takes on more tasks.

One job sector especially hit is accounting.

Accountant and Fresno City College instructor Monique Kelley said the possible impact of AI on their industry has long been a talking point. Many experts said AI couldn’t replace people, but she’s seen the technology only get better.

“There’s certain functions that cannot be replaced, but there are a lot of repetitive transactional-type processes that can be impacted where a computer of course can do something a lot quicker,” Kelley said.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Employment Changes

The irreplaceable part of accounting comes with fact-checking and critical thinking, Kelley said. Inaccuracies and “hallucinations” remain pervasive in AI, so human review is still necessary, she said.

The economic forum reported 53% of tasks by market research analysts and 67% of tasks by sales representatives could be done by AI, compared to 9% and 21% for managers.

The AI discussion itself is perhaps speeding up the timeline as young people and CEOs alike want to get ahead of AI’s capabilities.

The forum reported 49% of Gen Z job hunters believe AI has reduced the value of their college education. Kelley said she’s heard from students questioning the value of an education.

“The reliance on things that we used to do for ourselves or pay professionals to do — especially the younger generation is seeing that. ‘Why do I need to do this?’ ” Kelley said. “I even heard a student say, ‘Why do I even need an education?’ ”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, CEOs are slowing first-time hires as they wait to see what AI can do, Fortune reports.

Employers Still Want 4 Basic Skills: Buckley

Underwhelming reviews of Chat GPT-5 have given experts and educators a bit of a reprieve to plan for the future, said Christopher Zeitz, vice president of workforce development with the Fresno County Economic Development Corp.

Researchers still can’t achieve what they call artificial general intelligence — the kind of machine learning resembling human intelligence that can review other machine learning, Zeitz said.

It’s this window right now that could give educators the moment they need to plan, he said.

Reedley President Buckley sees this moment in time as the next Industrial Revolution or the development of the internet.

And so he spent the summer discussing this topic with employers. What he heard consistently was the need for basics.

“The same basic things need to be taught,” Buckley said. “Can a student communicate effectively? Can they think critically? Can they problem solve? And do they work in teams?”

The specific degree matters less than those essential skills. Buckley also expects a change in how education is conducted.

By 2027, Reedley will debut its new Ag Innovation Center that brings industry members directly onto the campus. About 50 students a semester will split their education between coursework and internships.

What’s called competency-based education prioritizes aptitude rather than time spent in instruction, allowing adults especially to retrain while balancing work and family.

“Colleges and universities are going to not be ‘one-and-done experiences,’ ” Buckley said. “I think we’re going to be transforming ourselves into facilities where you can come back and learn specific skills that you may need over your lifespan.”

Freelance Work Can Offset AI Salary Loss: FCC Instructor

Agencies around the Central Valley are working to integrate AI.

The Workforce Development Board, led by Konzcal, is working on initiatives to prepare workers on better AI training, he said.

At Fresno State, a new university-wide AI initiative provides solutions to students, a spokesperson said. Faculty are also redesigning courses to build AI into the curriculum.

At Fresno City College, entrepreneurship instructor Amber Balakian leads a working group to inform faculty and students on what to expect. She thinks AI will have an outsized impact on employment. And faster than people expect — given the vocal warnings from tech CEOs such as Elon Musk, she said. She wants students to be prepared for a worst-case scenario.

Part of that comes with freelance work.

“Another thing that’s going to be important for students to learn is, how do you also freelance?” Balakian said.