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- AI is stripping out the early-career tasks that once taught judgement, stakeholder management and strategic thinking.
- Boards must look beyond which tasks AI is automating and instead identify the underlying skills those tasks were quietly building.
- Beyond talent risk, AI raises governance concerns around purpose, values and accountability.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is removing many of the early-stage tasks that can help build judgement and experience. Left unchecked, boards may find their leadership pipeline lacking.
LinkedIn’s 2026 data ranks AI literacy as Australia’s single most in-demand skill. Globally, World Economic Forum-cited research finds junior employment down 9% at organisations adopting generative AI since 2023.
While the pipeline isn’t visibly collapsing in Australia yet, some leading indicators – including disrupted-occupation forecasts and executive warnings – suggest boards should be asking the question now, before it shows up in succession data.
“AI has helped us lift the floor and it has lifted the ceiling, too, because it allows experienced professionals to be more productive,” says Chirag Joshi, founder and CEO at 7 Rules Cyber and also ISACA Sydney chapter president. “However, it also risks removing the stairs, so to speak. Higher floor, higher ceiling, but the linkage between them now is a bit lost.”
Joshi’s observation is backed by PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer which found a “seniorisation” effect. Entry-level roles in AI-exposed occupations (in the US) are now seven times more likely to demand skills (judgement, stakeholder management, strategic thinking) that used to only appear later in a career, effectively removing the rung where those skills were learned.
But new tasks are 2.5 times more likely to require human intensive skills such as empathy, creativity and leadership, along with higher levels of face-to-face interaction, says the report.
PwC Australia’s managing director of workforce and change advisory, Peter Wheeler, says these capabilities can’t be replaced by machines, making them among the most valuable.
“The workforce of tomorrow will be less ‘doing’ and more ‘thinking’,” he says. “As AI adoption increases, critical thought, judgement and curiosity will be highly regarded.”
Joshi explains another perspective. By using AI, “it feels a person is more senior than they actually are, because they come up with something that looks so polished, but they lack the context”.
“When you dig a little deeper, it falls apart because it was generated by someone without the experience or understanding,” he says.
What boards should focus on
Boards need to firstly get a view of what tasks are proposed to be automated or AI augmented, then the skills that might be lost as a result, says Joshi.
“It is not so much about retaining low-value tasks, it’s more about understanding the skills that were being developed through them. Don’t worry about that task being automated. Think about what skill that task was teaching, because that’s the skill you want to replace.”
Questions for boards to consider
1. Has your board explicitly discussed AI’s effect on your organisation’s leadership pipeline, or is it still viewed purely as an efficiency tool?
2. Have you seen graduate or junior hiring change in your organisation because of AI, and was that a deliberate strategic decision or a cost-driven one?
3. What questions should directors be asking management about how junior roles are being redesigned, not just reduced?
4. Looking five years out, what’s the biggest risk to your own succession pipeline and does AI make it better or worse?
Ignoring purpose and values
Boards are increasingly asking how AI can improve productivity, reduce risk and create customer value, but is AI learning our purpose and values or quietly reshaping them, asks Dr Jacki Johnson FAICD, managing director at Focusing Moments and non-executive director at Community First Mutual Bank.
“AI is not culturally neutral,” she says. “Every model, workflow or decision rule has the potential to prioritise some behaviours over others. Companies rely on purpose and values statements to demonstrate their long-term commitment to stakeholders.”
This goes to the heart of good leadership. AI governance goes beyond considering the technological risk. Boardroom AI sessions should be challenging how the application considers purpose and values, says Johnson.
“Boards need to ensure the introduction of AI into workflows does not create unintended cultural consequences.”
Lack of visible AI leadership
The greatest reputation risk from AI will not come from the technology itself, but from a lack of visible leadership around how it is being used, says Asha Oberoi, managing director and head of Corporate Reputation at FTI Consulting.
“In the absence of leadership, those questions are often answered by individual teams, technology providers or the technology itself,” she says. “That creates inconsistency between what an organisation says it stands for and how it actually behaves.”
To ensure there is a pipeline of strong leadership coming through, directors need confidence that AI adoption is aligned with the organisation’s purpose, risk appetite and stakeholder commitments – and that someone remains visibly accountable for the outcomes, she says.
“Reputation risk emerges when adoption moves faster than governance and stakeholders cannot see where human responsibility sits. AI can automate a decision. It cannot automate accountability.”
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