Atos boss ‘utterly determined’ not to allow GenAI to pull up career drawbridge

Michael Herron, the UK head at French IT service provider Atos, has told Computer Weekly that ensuring future talent can get on the first rung of the career ladder – despite the implications of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) – is a subject close to his heart.

Organisations need to rethink career paths as GenAI increasingly performs the tasks once done by professionals at the start of their careers, and the IT sector can play a key role in setting an example of how humans and GenAI can coexist.

Atos is recruiting 50 graduates and apprentices next year as part of its plan to increase its UK workforce, which currently stands at about 3,600. Herron said these plans will take into account the increasing use of GenAI.

“I am working on this whole model around the coexistence of humans and AI together, because AI can do some people’s jobs,” he said.

Herron added that, with two children himself, he worries about young people’s careers in the future.

“Imagine if someone’s a developer, either now or certainly within 12 months: AI will do or is doing those junior development roles – those are roles on the ladder for [our] kids that are no longer there,” he said.

Addressing the impact on careers 

As a leader in a major IT company, Herron believes he is in a position to help. “My job as a CEO is to stop worrying about it and do something about it,” he said. “I need to create some quite novel and contemporary career pathways that are different to what they used to be.”

Herron added that there needs to be “more three-dimensional career paths” where people in their early careers can “even be middle or senior developers”.

He said that while technology like Microsoft Copilot might do most of the work, it still needs a pilot, and that he needs to make apprenticeships and provide grants that can help change career paths.

“And I’m not worried about that,” said Herron. “I’m actually quite excited that there can be much more three-dimensional career paths, and that’s why I’m saying that it’s AI and human, it’s not AI or human. I’m going to bring in more apprentices and offer more grants, and I’m going to create different, and more novel and contemporary career pathways for them.”

He described these career paths as more “ubiquitous”, adding that coders could become testers and testers could become developers. “Some of our best architects that we have now used to be developments,” said Herron.

“AI has taken a job a human used to do, and the human’s job is to nurture it and develop it so it has those efficiencies and can deliver those benefits,” he said. “I think they can coexist, and I am utterly determined that they do, but it will be very different to the old days. We used to come in as a level one and work our way up to level two, but that has just gone out the window.”

No sector untouched

According to research by OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania, business roles that will be affected by GenAI include accountants, legal assistants and financial analysts. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs published figures in March 2023 that spoke of 300 million jobs being exposed to AI across all sectors.

On the changing roles of software developers, Sam Kingston, CEO of software services company Zenitech, said: “Skills like critical thinking, creativity, communication and understanding user needs become even more crucial as AI handles more of the direct coding tasks. AI assistants can provide explanations for code snippets, suggest relevant documentation and help developers understand unfamiliar codebases faster.

“We see AI not as a replacement for developers, but as a catalyst for human potential, enabling both technical and non-technical teams to build and learn faster,” he said. “By retraining talent to collaborate with AI, we’re elevating roles and accelerating outcomes across the development lifecycle.”

The IT sector has an advantage in understanding the capabilities of AI, and as a result, where humans can flourish alongside it, but the same challenges are faced in all sectors adopting AI.

For example, the legal industry is increasingly taking up artificial intelligence to cut costs and make processes more efficient. Earlier this year, a legal firm based on the technology, which can complete a legal claim process with virtually no human involvement, was granted approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which described it as a “landmark”.

This week, a law firm known as Three Points was launched with AI at its core. It said the use of AI will mean the company, which specialises in managing large business transactions, has had to hire far fewer people to get going than would be required of a traditional law firm.

Co-founder Simon Leaf told Computer Weekly: “With the use of the technology that we have, the prompts that we’ve set up and the other workflows, we’re less likely to need more junior staff.”

He admitted that there is uncertainty around how this will impact the people at the start of their careers in the sector.

AI is reaching all parts of the legal would. Neil Hudgell, founder at Hudgell Solicitors, said the company is beginning to scope out AI in the back office and for things like document review. He said he doesn’t expect it to dampen career opportunities at his firm because the business is very human-focused – but added that managing this “at more transactional law firms will be more challenging”.