WRGB 6 News Albany: Stanford study reveals AI impact on young workers, Upstate NY using AI to boost economy

September 2nd, 2025

September 1, 2025 – Watch Here with Emma Quinn.

One of the biggest trends in the workplace is the growing implementation of ai.

In some cases it’s helping employees get the job done- in others it’s replacing the person all together.

A new study from economists at Stanford University shows employees aged 22 to 25 saw a 13% drop in employment in sectors that heavily use AI.

“It really is one of the first sort of deeper dives that’s been done, you know, in terms of looking at the impact of AI on the labor force,” said Justin Wilcox, Executive Director of Upstate United. “What they came up with and what they seem to have found is that it’s having a disproportionate impact on those sort of, you know, early entry, early career entry level jobs.”

Industries utilizing AI the most are customer service and software engineering.

Entry level positions are the jobs most impacted, the study refers to jobs based on “large language model” as jobs being taken over.

“You know, you get these large language models with, you know, generative AI that actually do a fairly good job of sort of replicating, if you will, what we learn at school,” added Wilcox. We gain information, we read textbooks, and we, generally speaking, come out of college, we have a base of knowledge”.
However, in other cases AI is helping others get the job done.

“What they also found is that it’s actually assisting some folks in the same fields that are older because it’s rather than replacing them, it’s simply augmenting or assisting them in doing their jobs more efficiently and better and more creatively,” added Wilcox.

Another report by Brookings found multiple upstate cities including Albany are already using AI, which is helping boost the economy.

“So using the technology, you know, adoption of it, the training of the, in the universities and the institutions and the skill sets, right, of the labor force, again, really uniquely, you know, position Rochester and Syracuse, Albany and Buffalo,” Wilcox said.

As AI continues to grow, regulations and policies are shifting.

Wilcox says balancing the policies could be a challenge of its own.

Governor Hochul spoke about AI regulations at an AI summit in June.

“Come join us and then you can create it here with us and other states can replicate it,” said Hochul. “I know this is really Washington’s responsibility because it’s hard for companies to bring policy-they have to do it in 50 different states, that is not ideal.”

Also in June the governor announced a $40 million investment for the Empire AI Beta Supercomputer.

It’s expected to allow hundreds of researchers from 10 member institutions to advance AI for public good.