This paper argues that cutting entry-level work with AI can create a long-term expertise problem that no individual company has an incentive to solve.
It frames that as a "Cognitive Commons" problem: every firm benefits from a profession-wide pool of deep expertise, but each firm also has an incentive to cut the entry-level roles that help regenerate it.
The paper identifies two ways that regeneration pipeline can weaken.
AI can eliminate junior positions outright, or let juniors produce strong outputs without doing the cognitive struggle through which domain judgment is normally built.
The paper argues that effective AI use still depends on what it calls the Validation Tether: people need Internalized Mastery to catch plausible but substantively wrong AI outputs.
Early labor-market evidence fits the concern, in highly AI-exposed occupations, workers aged 22-25 saw a 16% relative employment decline from October 2022 to September 2025, while employment for ages 35-49 grew by more than 8%.
- arxiv. org/abs/2607.29380
Title: "The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons: How AI Could Disrupt the Regeneration of Professional Expertise"