For most of us, the “start at the bottom, climb to the top” career story has been all we’ve ever known, permeating everything from academia to corporate culture. Now, artificial intelligence is stress-testing that narrative like never before.
In the United States, Revelio Labs data cited in a report by The Standard shows that entry-level job postings are down 35% since January 2023, with AI flagged as a key factor. SignalFire’s hiring analysis (2019–2024) meanwhile found hiring for workers with less than one year of post-graduate experience has dropped 50% across functions ranging from engineering to finance.
The warnings are blunt even among AI’s biggest boosters, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggesting up to 50% of entry-level jobs could be replaced once AI can reliably work eight-hour shifts. Others urge patience, arguing that big technologies often take decades to fully reshape workflows and that the bigger fight may be about making sure the gains are broadly shared.
Adoption is up in Thailand, along with anxiety
Thailand is feeling the same tremors, albeit with local twists. Jobsdb by SEEK, Thailand’s leading online recruitment platform, described 2025 as a year of constant labor-market motion, with Gen Z reshaping expectations around meaningful work, hybrid setups, flexible benefits, and job-hopping as a normal response to poor fit. On the employer side, AI is moving from a useful assisting tool to hiring signal, with 65% of employers already considering AI skills as a supplementary requirement. Additionally, more than 34% of organizations have adopted AI in recruitment to improve screening accuracy.
That doesn’t erase fears for new grads and white-collar roles. Kasikornbank is launching an early retirement program for employees aged 45 and older, with AI disruption part of the backdrop. It also highlights how AI can compress skill hierarchies as companies hire fewer senior coders, mostly to review output from juniors using AI tools, and how AI can substitute for repetitive work in areas such as marketing.
Pilots abound as scaling remains a challenge
Still, as with other emerging markets, high enthusiasm in Thailand for implementation frequently runs up against practical constraints.
At an executive roundtable titled “Accelerating the AI Future with Dataiku and AWS,” senior tech leaders from major Thai corporations cited barriers such as fragmented legacy data, weak governance, and integration headaches. There are nevertheless bright spots, as Mitr Phol reported dozens of classic AI projects, with several already live, while noting that 35% of employees based in Thailand are now using generative AI on a day to day basis.
The stakes are massive for smaller firms, given that Thai SMEs employ about 12 million workers or roughly 70% of the workforce, and industry voices warn that Thailand risks falling behind if upskilling budgets and national plans stay thin.
Agents, security, and a bigger map than jobs
If 2025 was about AI as a tool, 2026 may see the technology assume the role of “thinking partner,” according to Microsoft, with AI agents becoming collaborators and new security standards becoming a prerequisite for deploying them at scale. The promise extends far beyond productivity, as AI-driven advances in health screening, materials discovery, and weather/flood prediction are pitched as real levers for resilience and sustainability — exactly the kind of high-impact use cases that matter in the Asia-Pacific amid mounting climate concerns.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s consumer adoption is only accelerating. OpenAI forum coverage shows weekly active ChatGPT users in Thailand rising more than fourfold, driven largely by 18–24s, with popular uses including translation, tutoring, self-care guidance, and creative writing.
The implication is massive, with Thailand fast becoming one of the region’s clearest test cases for whether mass AI adoption turns into broad-based opportunity, or a sharper divide between those who can adapt and those who get left behind.
