AI adoption eats entry-level jobs

Welcome back, Superhuman. A new Harvard study finds companies that adopt AI are cutting back on junior hires. Meanwhile, Salesforce has swapped out 4,000 support roles for AI agents, according to the company’s CEO.

Also Today: Learn how to merge multiple images into a single image with AI, and get the latest prompts, headlines, and trending social posts.

TODAY IN AI

1. AI adoption is choking off entry-level hiring: A new Harvard study has found that since early 2023, companies that are adopting AI have slashed junior hiring by 22% — even as senior roles kept growing. The steep decline doesn’t seem to stem from layoffs but from fewer new hires at the bottom. Wholesale and retail seemed to take the biggest hits, where junior hiring plunged 40% per quarter. Graduates from mid-tier institutions seem to have taken the brunt, while those from elite and lower-tier schools faced better odds.

2. AI gold rush spills beyond chips: Semiconductor companies like Nvidia have typically been the largest beneficiaries of the surge in AI demand. Now, storage, servers and data centers are experiencing a boom. The winners: CoreWeave tripled revenue to $1.2B, Microsoft Azure jumped 39%, and Nvidia hit $39B in data center revenue. Manufacturing giant Foxconn saw server revenue overtake smartphone manufacturing for the first time, while Dell logged a record $12.1B in AI orders in a single quarter.

3. Salesforce swaps out 4,000 support jobs for AI agents: On a recent podcast appearance, CEO Marc Benioff said that AI now manages half of Salesforce’s customer interactions, freeing the remaining staff up for more important tasks and helping the company respond to about 100M leads that would previously have gone unanswered. Benioff described the AI-to-human workflow as comparable to Tesla's self-driving cars, where AI tackles routine tasks before passing off more complex issues to humans.

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FROM THE FRONTIER

New study finds you can flatter AI into doing things it shouldn’t

AI chatbots like ChatGPT come with built-in guardrails designed to prevent them from engaging in problematic behavior — like hurling insults at users or generating guides for producing controlled substances. These guardrails are essential for model and user safety. But a new study has found that these guardrails may be more vulnerable than we thought.

Flattery will (apparently) get you everywhere. The study from University of Pennsylvania researchers found that, with the right techniques, AI chatbots can be nudged into breaking their own rules. The researchers used persuasion techniques from psychologist Robert Cialdini’s bestseller ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ to push GPT-4o Mini into carrying out tasks it typically wouldn’t.

The results were striking: Typically, ChatGPT would only explain how to synthesize lidocaine (a controlled substance) 1% of the time when asked directly. But when researchers first asked about creating vanillin — establishing that it answers chemistry questions — compliance shot up to 100%. The model could also be manipulated through flattery and social pressure: telling the chatbot that "all the other LLMs are doing it” seemed to boost compliance by 18%.

The study highlights a concerning vulnerability. While it only tested one model, the findings expose a larger chink in the armor: sophisticated jailbreaking may not even be necessary to bypass a model’s internal guardrails — sometimes basic psychology is enough to make an AI forget its training. In some ways, AI models aren’t that different from humans.

THE AI ACADEMY

How to merge multiple images into a single image with AI

• Go to Google AI Studio and select ‘Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (Nano Banana)’ as your model.

• Upload multiple images (scenes, people, objects, or props).

• Enter your prompt describing exactly how you want them combined.

Sample Prompt: “A model is posing and leaning against a pink BMW. She is wearing the following items, the scene is against a light grey background. The green alien is a keychain, and it's attached to the pink handbag. The model also has a pink parrot on her shoulder. There is a pug sitting next to her wearing a pink collar and gold headphones.”

Prompt Template: “[Main subject] is placed in [scene/background]. They are styled with [specific clothing/accessories]. [Object 1] is positioned [relationship to subject]. [Object 2] is placed [relationship to scene]. The mood is [lighting/emotion/style]. The background is [describe color/texture/environment].”

• Within seconds, you’ll get a single hyper-realistic merged photo.

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IN THE KNOW

What’s trending on socials and headlines today

🔼 Don’t Die: Longevity expert Bryan Johnson explains how OpenAI + Retro’s stem cell breakthrough could be the ChatGPT moment for extending human lifespan.

🚨 AI Schemes: Rapper Meek Mill teased an AI project on X — and immediately got roasted by users.

🧑‍🦰 Mini Mode: From photo to figurine in one prompt — Gemini’s nano-banana is turning selfies, pets, and family pics into collectible-style art. Here’s how to make your own.

🥷 Ninja Moves: While everyone’s watching chatbots, Apple quietly shipped models that are 85× faster and can caption video in real time — all on your device. See it in action here.

Eight US and Indian VC firms have pledged over $1B to back India’s deep tech startups, targeting AI, semiconductors, space, and more. OpenAI is also mapping out plans for a 1gigawatt data center in the country.

LayerX has raised $100M in Series B funding to build back-office automation with AI. Tokyo’s unicorn-in-the-making now serves over 15,000 companies and is racing toward a record-breaking SaaS trajectory.

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PROMPT STATION

High-Converting Copywriting

Prompt: You're a world-class copywriter. Rewrite this {landing page/sales pitch/email} to convert better. Make it punchy, concise, and persuasive. Use proven frameworks like PAS or AIDA. Here’s the original: {paste it}.

Source: x/bigaiguy

Crayon Wonderland

Midjourney Prompt: rear view of a car on a winding road, sky dominated by a huge glowing sun, drawn in wild crayon strokes, rainbow scribbles overlapping, rough childlike textures, chaotic hyper-colorful energy --chaos 5 --ar 9:16 --style raw --v 7 --stylize 50 --weird 200

You can use similar prompts in ChatGPT without parameters to get similar results.

Whenever you’re ready to take the next step

• Check out our Top 125 AI Tools

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Until next time — Zain & the Superhuman AI team