AI is beginning to shape the transition from education to work for young people.
Career development practitioners are increasingly using large-scale language models to support guidance sessions and to create and manage resources. Powered by an AI-based model and powered by labor market data, the career-focused chatbot is being developed to provide access to “personalized” support through a hybrid model of AI and human guidance, directing young people to expert advisors.
Formal career guidance aside, young people are turning directly to easily accessible general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT for career exploration, job applications, and interview preparation. On the other hand, AI is transforming the labor market and creating uncertainty in young people’s career plans, as the current jobs they aspire to may not exist or be different in the future.
The Nuffield Foundation, with its deep expertise in education and youth transition, and the Ada Lovelace Institute, which focuses on the relationship between AI and data-driven technologies and the people they affect, collaborated to explore this emerging field. In Navigating the Future: A Landscape Review of AI in Career Guidance for Youth, published today, Renate Samson and I discuss how AI is currently being used to support youth transitions, assess opportunities and risks, and identify future ways in which AI developers, policy makers, education leaders, and career development practitioners can engage with AI to deliver positive and equitable outcomes for young people.
Through a literature review and exploratory conversations with career development practitioners, educators, employers, technologists and policy makers across the UK, we identified areas where AI could potentially improve access to career information, enable hybrid human-AI approaches to advice and guidance, expand access to employment for marginalized young people, and improve efficiency for practitioners.
Given the challenges facing young people today, as reflected in high unemployment rates and economic activity, these opportunities can have a positive impact. However, introducing AI also comes with risks.
The evidence that young people are using popular chatbots for career guidance is particularly worrying. The human nature of chatbots can give young people the impression that this model has empathy and understanding, and is on par with human guidance. In reality, the results are unreliable and not based on the ethical and professional standards that instruction requires.
More broadly, issues around accuracy and bias impact how decisions are made. The hallucination challenges that characterize AI can lead people to rely on information that is inaccurate, misleading, or simply fabricated. A further challenge that is becoming clear is the risk of increased over-reliance on technology and cognitive offload, potentially leading to the deterioration of critical skills. There is also a risk that inequalities in human support will increase as access to information through digital tools and the adoption of AI increases. Many young people are concerned about the impact of AI on the environment.
To mitigate these risks and promote appropriate, ethical and effective approaches to the use of AI in career guidance, the report highlights the need to:
- A purpose-driven (rather than technology-driven) approach guided by a deep understanding of young people’s career support needs, the use of AI as a support rather than a replacement for professional career advisors, and a collaboration between AI developers and career experts.
- Upskill career workers across the board on the ethical use of AI, technological transformation of the labor market, and how to support young people in developing the skills they need to apply for jobs and effectively use AI in the workplace. Employer engagement and work experience are important for young people and advisors to stay on top of the latest trends.
- Regulation and evaluation that includes independent and impartial evidence on the effectiveness of AI tools on education and employment outcomes. At this time, there is little evidence beyond the feasibility and acceptability of implementation. Building such evidence is difficult given the pace of technological change, new tools coming to market, the time required to assess medium- and long-term outcomes, and the multifaceted nature of career guidance.
To support progress in this field, the Nuffield Foundation has funded the Institute of Employment Research at the University of Warwick to develop and pilot an evaluation protocol that will be used to evaluate career advice from AI as opposed to human advisors. This research takes a collaborative approach to building sector consensus on appropriate assessment approaches and evidence thresholds to inform practical guidelines and concrete policies on the use of the tool.
Like many other sectors, the career guidance sector is keen to identify how the introduction of AI could benefit young people and practitioners alike. Our report shows that there has been a lot of research, exploration, and testing that has been considered. There is still work to be done to ensure that AI adoption is appropriate. We hope our efforts support a positive direction for travel in this industry, with lasting benefits for everyone.
Written by Emily Tanner, Director of Post-14 Education and Skills Programs At the Nuffield Foundation
