Regular readers of this email have heard me mention the economics blog “Marginal Revolution,” and have also heard me spout forth opinions related to AI and how it is changing, and will change, the world of white collar workers and the organizations they work for.

So on a recent Sunday morning, I was very excited to wake up and see that Marginal Revolution had written about an AI study on exactly that. In fact, I got out of my nice warm bed and rushed to a nearby cafe to have a tea and read that study.

Getting out of a nice warm bed. On an early Sunday morning. To read a study about AI. That I saw mentioned in an economics blog.

God, could I BE any geekier? (said in my best Chandler Bing voice)

Anyway, the study, which was done by two professors from Spain’s IESE, made many interesting points. Today I’ll just mention one though…

One kind of AI usage in particular might be increasing the gap between your juniors and seniors. I’ve mentioned before that in order to maintain a stable enterprise value in the AI era, the juniors are going to need an even tighter tie with the seniors, so this would be taking things in the wrong direction.

The study mentions anecdotal evidence (see screenshot below) that, if the seniors are using AI (which they probably are, and should be), the distance between them and the juniors might grow, which means the juniors are going to be increasingly out of touch with the client communication skills that your company will depend on more and more.

I asked around about this, and also got anecdotal confirmation that this was going on.

Now, I know that juniors are, by nature, always going to be complaining that they’re not getting enough facetime with the seniors. Plus, even if it’s a legitimate problem, there could be a million other things at work here. But if you see the seniors using AI more and more, and at the same time notice an uptick in facetime complaints from the juniors, you might want to raise the red flag that it is putting the organization’s enterprise value in danger, something almost every partner is going to be deeply concerned with.

By the way, just so there’s no misunderstanding, just so no one thinks I’m “anti-AI” or something: You should be, and in fact need to be, using AI in your organization. I would never argue against that in a million years.

Just be aware that it might cause problems, like the succession-related one I describe here, and that might have knock-on effects on instability in your company’s valuation if you let the effects get out of hand.