# Automation-paradox

Published articles for Automation-paradox.

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## How AI Automation Could Affect the Development of Engineering Expertise

DevFeed: [How AI Automation Could Affect the Development of Engineering Expertise](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/ai-efficiency-could-cost-us-the-next-generation-of-experts-50925.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-engineer-skills>)

Author: Richard Mitchell

Published: 2026-09-02T13:00:04Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [IEEE Spectrum](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/ieee-spectrum.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [Generative AI](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/generative-ai.md>), [Automation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/automation.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [automation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automation.md>), [automation-paradox](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automation-paradox.md>), [aviation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/aviation.md>), [career](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/career.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [engineering-careers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering-careers.md>), [generative-ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/generative-ai.md>), [nuclear-power](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/nuclear-power.md>)

### AI overview

The article argues that excessive automation can erode practitioners' expertise by removing the manual work needed to keep skills current. It applies this concern to generative AI and examines evidence that AI adoption may reduce junior employment while senior employment continues to grow, while noting that the causes remain contested.

### Source excerpt

A little over a decade ago, I led the controls design for a first-of-its-kind full digital-control system for a U.S. nuclear plant. It was, on paper, a beautiful machine--engineered to run itself the way a modern airliner does, with operators watching over a system that rarely needed them. And we made a decision that, to an efficiency-minded observer, looked backward: We deliberately left manual steps inside sequences the system could execute on its own. We were solving a specific problem. An operator who only ever supervises automation slowly stops being an operator. The hands go cold. The mental model of what the plant is actually doing gets fuzzy. Then comes the day the automation hands control back. It's always the worst day, because automation only quits when it's confused or in trouble. But by then, you have a person in the chair who hasn't truly operated the thing in years. The manual steps were there to keep the human current. It was inefficient by design, on purpose. That plant, as it happened, was never built. It was shelved amid the politics and economics that surround nuclear power in this country, for reasons that had nothing to do with the engineering. But the design instinct outlived the project, and I've come to believe it's the most useful idea I can offer to the argument now consuming every boardroom: What happens to human expertise when AI does the work that used to build it? AI Is Disrupting the Engineering Career Ladder The data has gotten hard to wave away. A Harvard University working paper covering some 65 million workers at more than 280,000 U.S. firms found that after companies adopted generative AI, junior employment fell roughly 9 percent within six quarters relative to nonadopters, while senior employment kept right on growing. A Stanford analysis of ADP payroll records points the same way: The youngest workers in the most AI-exposed occupations lost ground after late 2022 while their more-experienced colleagues held theirs. The Stanford