Kai Riemer, Professor of Information Technology and Organisation, University of Sydney, Sandra Peter, Director of Sydney Executive Plus, Business School, University of Sydney
Have you ever sat in a meeting where someone half your age casually mentions “prompting ChatGPT” or “running this through AI”, and felt a familiar knot in your stomach? You’re not alone.
There’s a growing narrative that artificial intelligence (AI) is inherently ageist, that older workers will be disproportionately hit by job displacement and are more reluctant to adopt AI tools.
But such assumptions – especially that youth is a built-in advantage when it comes to AI – might not actually hold.
While ageism in hiring is a real concern, if you have decades of work experience, your skills, knowledge and judgement could be exactly what’s needed to harness AI’s power – without falling into its traps.
What does the research say?
The research on who benefits most from AI at work is surprisingly murky, partly because it’s still early days for systematic studies on AI and work.
Some research suggests lower-skilled workers might have more to gain than high-skilled workers on certain straightforward tasks. The picture becomes much less clear under real-world conditions, especially for complex work that relies heavily on judgement and experience.
Through our Skills Horizon research project, where we’ve been talking to Australian and global senior leaders across different industries, we’re hearing a more nuanced story.
Many older workers do experience AI as deeply unsettling. As one US-based CEO of a large multinational corporation told us:
AI can be a form of existential challenge, not only to what you’re doing, but how you view yourself.
But leaders are also observing an important and unexpected distinction: experienced workers are often much better at judging the quality of AI outputs. This might become one of the most important skills, given that AI occasionally hallucinates or gets things wrong.
The CEO of a South American creative agency put it bluntly:
Senior colleagues are using multiple AIs. If they don’t have the right solution, they re-prompt, iterate, but the juniors are satisfied with the first answer, they copy, paste and think they’re finished. They don’t yet know what they are looking for, and the danger is that they will not learn what to look for if they keep working that way.
Experience as an AI advantage
Experienced workers have a crucial advantage when it comes to prompting AI: they understand context and usually know how to express it clearly.
While a junior advertising creative might ask an AI to “Write copy for a sustainability campaign”, a seasoned account director knows to specify “Write conversational social media copy for a sustainable fashion brand targeting eco-conscious millennials, emphasising our client’s zero-waste manufacturing process and keeping the tone authentic but not preachy”.
This skill mirrors what experienced professionals do when briefing junior colleagues or freelancers: providing detailed instructions, accounting for audience, objectives, and constraints. It’s a competency developed through years of managing teams and projects.
Younger workers, despite their comfort with technology, may actually be at a disadvantage here. There’s a crucial difference between using technology frequently and using it well.
Many young people may become too accustomed to AI assistance. A survey of US teens this year found 72% had used an AI companion app. Some children and teens are turning to chatbots for everyday decisions.
Without the professional experience to recognise when something doesn’t quite fit, younger workers risk accepting AI responses that feel right – effectively “vibing” their work – rather than developing the analytical skills to evaluate AI usefulness.
So what can you do?
First, everyone benefits from learning more about AI. In our time educating everyone from students to senior leaders and CEOs, we find that misunderstandings about how AI works have little to do with age.
A good place to start is reading up on what AI is and what it can do for you:
If you’re not even sure which AI platform to try, we would recommend testing the most prominent ones, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini.
Read more: The biggest barrier to AI adoption in the business world isn’t tech – it’s user confidence
If you’re an experienced worker feeling threatened by AI, lean into your strengths. Your decades of experience with delegation, context-setting, and critical evaluation are exactly what AI tools need.
Start small. Pick one regular work task and experiment with AI assistance, using your judgement to evaluate and refine outputs. Practice prompting like you’re briefing a junior colleague: be specific about context, constraints, and desired outcomes, and repeat the process as needed.
Most importantly, don’t feel threatened. In a workplace increasingly filled with AI-generated content, your ability to spot what doesn’t quite fit, and to know what questions to ask, has never been more valuable.
Kai Riemer is co-author of the annual "Skills Horizon" research project, which identifies key leadership skills (including in AI), based on interviews with global and Australian leaders and executives across various fields. He also educates leaders in AI fluency through Sydney Executive Plus at the University of Sydney.
Sandra Peter is co-author of the annual "Skills Horizon" research project, which identifies key leadership skills (including in AI), based on interviews with global and Australian leaders and executives across various fields. She also educates leaders in AI fluency through Sydney Executive Plus at the University of Sydney.
