DALLAS — Trinity Delacruz misses the old days, when she would write emails from scratch without AI input.
This summer, the recent grad is interning in the sales department at a North Texas cybersecurity company. She said AI has become difficult to avoid in her daily work, with transcription and summary agents popping up in meetings and inboxes.
"I do have to whip it into shape, to make sure my voice doesn't sound robotic," Delacruz said. She also said she's concerned about the effects of AI on the environment and critical thinking skills.
Delacruz majored in business administration with a marketing concentration — a career path she said colleagues have told her is "dangerous" to enter right now, given accelerated automation in digital marketing. Now, she's looking into field marketing, which involves more in-person interactions like pop-up product demonstrations at trade shows.
"It feels a little better because you work with people," Delacruz said.
About 1 in 5 jobs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are highly exposed to AI, according to a Dallas Morning News and Hearst Devhub analysis of employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a study by researchers from OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania. As AI continues to reshape jobs, it's the human aspects of work that could become more important, workers, employers and experts said.
AIpocalypse? Too early to declare
While rapidly progressing capabilities of AI are likely broadening more fields to automation and sparking worry for workers, experts aren't seeing broad replacement so far, Crockett said.
"A lot of employers, companies, employees are all still feeling it out right now," she said. "I can't say I've seen any evidence of major, significant shifts as far as employment goes."
It will take time for clear trends to emerge from the data, she said. On the individual level, there may be AI-induced replacement taking place, and it's possible that in a few years, researchers might find AI did contribute to a "Great Replacement."
There have been several high-profile mass layoffs in the technology sector this year, affecting thousands of workers across dozens of companies. Many commentators, as well as some company executives, have cited AI and new technologies as one of the driving factors.
But Sammy Abdullah, managing director at Dallas-based venture capital firm Blossom Street Ventures, cautioned against attributing these layoffs to AI. His firm focuses on enterprise-level AI software companies.
"Software overhired in response to COVID," Abdullah said. "It's using AI as a shield to say, 'Aw, we're now letting go of a big chunk of our workforce because Claude is doing what they (could).'"
Replacement vs. augmentation
Instead, Abdullah said AI can augment work — helping employees accomplish routine tasks more efficiently to free up time for more meaningful work.
One local example is WhitegloveAI. Frisco's traffic department is currently testing one of the company's AI voice agents to eventually handle calls from the public. Founder Nick James said the tool could save Frisco traffic engineers about 20 hours a week.
"With our clients, it's typically and most likely always providing relief to their existing workforce," James said.
That won't always be the case, James said, predicting that at some point, employees who don't know how to use AI to enhance their jobs will be replaced. He said in his hiring process, he's looking for new hires who can creatively integrate AI into their workflows. Candidates who perceive AI as a threat, on the other hand, are less likely to get the job.
That could represent a growing sentiment among D-FW employers. Across North Texas, more companies are planning to incorporate AI into their work, according to the Census Bureau's biweekly Business Trends and Outlook Survey. Less than 19% of respondents in November said they planned to use AI for business in the next six months. At the end of June, that number had grown to nearly 29%.
Entering the AI-age job market
In Abdullah's view, AI's progress might be crowding out entry-level workers, since the technology is adept at automating many tasks usually assigned to younger employees.
"They slowed down hiring, especially for the individual that required a lot of training, like new grads," he said.
As of March, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates ages 22 to 27 in the U.S. is 5.6%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That rate hasn't been that high since early 2021.
But Crockett said AI's role in current hiring conditions isn't so clear-cut. Even before new developments in AI tools and models, the job market has been "low-hire, low-fire," she said. Some economists argue remote work also plays a role.
In D-FW's tech sector, AI has impacted entry-level jobs in quality assurance, technical writing and user support the most, said Wendi Wilburn, president and CEO of Tech Titans. New technologies have led to both downsizing and changes in hiring and training.
One difficulty Wilburn has observed for fresh grads is that companies often don't lay out clear AI goals.
"Since they can't define it, they can't train for it," she said. That leads to young workers not knowing what AI skills they should pick up.
AI has also created an arms race between job applicants and recruiters, said Steven O'Neal, who is head of account management at Capsher, a software consulting firm. O'Neal also serves as chair of the AI forum at Tech Titans.
People using AI tools to tweak and send their resumes en masse have caused a spike in applications that hirers have to sift through, he said. As a result, employers are also using more automated methods to filter candidates out.
"It's creating this tough situation where unfortunately, applicants are caught in the crossfire," O'Neal said. "And they're questioning themselves on not necessarily their technical ability, but 'Am I doing the tricks ... so that I beat the system?'"
The human element
Wilburn predicts changes affecting the tech industry will spill over into other sectors.
"Every company is essentially, at its core, a tech company today," she said.
Ahmed Al-Hanafi, a passenger service assistant at DFW Airport, said AI is starting to affect him and his colleagues. Al-Hanafi has worked at DFW for 15 years, helping passengers who need wheelchair services and unaccompanied minors board their planes.
Lately, parts of the airport have been implementing electronic ticketing gates, which Al-Hanafi said could cut down on gate agent staffing. Autonomous wheelchairs, too, have been popping up through new pilot programs.
But Al-Hanafi echoes Delacruz and Crockett's perspective on the edge humans have over AI systems. His passengers can direct him to stop for food. They ask about Dallas, DFW airport and local restaurants. And he responds in a way the machines can't, at least not yet.
"It's not just taking them from gate to gate," Al-Hanafi said. "It's not dry. It's emotion."