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High unemployment numbers for recent university and college graduates are causing fears they now face a tougher, more competitive hiring landscape. Many suspect AI is stealing their career prospects.

about consulting firms recognizing that five 22-year-olds using ChatGPT can do the work of 20 recent post-secondary graduates. Many tech firms are turning to a handful of superstars working with AI co-pilots to develop their software programming. It raises the question whether AI and entry level jobs are compatible in the future.

In conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Anthropic CEO and AI pioneer Dario Amodei recently admitted, “I think what is striking to me about this AI boom is that it’s bigger and it’s broader and it’s moving faster than anything has before. And so compared to previous technology changes, I’m a little bit worried about the labour impact, simply because it’s happening so fast. Yes, people will adapt, but they may not adapt fast enough.”

When adding to their work forces, AEC companies expect a higher level of technical skills today than ever before. A senior associate with a leading French engineering company told the Daily Commercial News, “The young engineers we recruit must already have the ability to synthesize information, which allows them to ask the right questions and therefore potentially communicate more easily with AI.”

Experts are divided as to how fast-moving AI developments will impact AEC work patterns and careers over the longer term.

What is becoming very clear is AI’s ability to reduce time spent on mundane, day-to-day aspects of professional work, such as creating compliance reports or communicating complex concepts to clients through visualizations, futurist Bernard Marr in Forbes magazine.

“This will free them up to spend more face-to-face time with those clients, in order to better understand their needs. And they will find themselves more able to take a broader, strategic view of project design and execution.”

A 2025 analyzing over 82,000 reactions to 93 distinct decision contexts noted, “people will prefer AI only if they think the AI is more capable than humans and the task is non-personal.”

Since architecture and engineering encompass both the personal and non-personal, it might explain the current push-and-pull of AI’s influence.

AEC firms are taking measures regarding the use of AI. One has circulated cautionary parameters to staff, explaining while civil and structural engineers might be, “free to use generative AI tools,” they must maintain control over their decisions and ensure any results compiled by AI are checked and proven reliable. Sensitive or confidential data must not be shared, in compliance with the company’s IT and ethics charters.

While the construction industry has seen technology developments in the past, AI is different. Never before has a technology threatened the employment landscape so quickly.

Computational designer and structural engineer Grzegorz Kołodziej  his concerns over what would be lost if AI was to dominate architecture. Notably, he predicts a “missing generation” of younger designers who learn through practice, bring fresh perspectives and act as a “natural talent pipeline” to replace a “shrinking pool of seniors.”

A similar high level of concern is by Florida International University professor Neil Leach as, “the existential threat posed by .” He says architecture could be “sleepwalking into oblivion.”

“Often we are led to believe that rumours of the death of the architect are greatly exaggerated. The unique creative powers of the human mind, so the narrative goes, will endure. I beg to differ, however. There are signs that AI is becoming not only good, but terrifyingly good, to the point that it is beginning to expose our own limitations as human beings, and putting our jobs as architects unquestionably at risk.”

Not everyone is as alarmist. In fact, some feel increased engagement with AI by engineers, for example, might be the correct strategy. 

Writing for the American Society of Civil Engineers, Robert Reid , “greater use of AI will only increase the need for human involvement in designing, constructing, and maintaining the built environment.”

Furthermore, at the end of the day, a human manager is still required to sign a building permit.

Reid references Anand Stephen of AEC company Gannett Fleming, who says, “Although there are certain mundane, manual tasks that AI might take over for civil engineers, the real issue is that ‘AI is not going to replace your job; the person using AI will replace your job.’”

In the immediate term, it likely falls to the largest AEC firms to engage and filter the potential of AI within their fields of expertise. What is also apparent is that those training to enter the fields of architecture and engineering must seek out adequate AI training in order to elevate their chances of employment.

To address this, learning institutions like Smith Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. are beginning to adapt their curriculums to align with the demands of tomorrow’s work force. The faculty plans a rollout in winter 2026 of one of Canada’s first supercomputing labs exclusively focused on the undergraduate learning experience and AI innovation.

This will allow students to gain familiarity with AI as they progress from second to fourth-year instruction and give themselves a foundation for entering the workforce better equipped and prepared.

John Bleasby is a freelance writer. Send comments and Inside Innovation column ideas to editor@dailycommercialnews.com.