› Grades 9–12 · ages 14–18 · Structured debate
Will AI take the jobs worth having?
“Within a decade, AI will eliminate more good jobs than it creates.”
An evidence-driven debate on labor displacement that forces students to define 'good job,' weigh historical precedent against what is different now, and confront the question personally: what should a sixteen-year-old do about it?
60 minutes · one class period · free to photocopy
Students will be able to
- Distinguish task automation from job elimination and explain why the difference matters.
- Argue an assigned side with historical and current evidence, and steelman the opposition.
- Write a defensible personal position that concedes one real cost.
Vocabulary
- Labor displacement & augmentation — Will AI replace jobs, change them, or create new ones — and for whom?
- Automation — Software doing a whole task chain with minimal human steps.
- Copilot — AI embedded in a tool you already use — suggest, don’t decide alone.
- AI agent — A system that plans steps and uses tools — not just one chat reply.
- Inference cost — What you pay — in money and energy — each time a model answers.
Follow-up for students: look at real jobs that build AI, work around it, or use it →
Agenda · 60 minutes
| Minutes | Segment | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 0–6 | Warm-up | Your job at 25 — task-by-task. Star what a model could do. |
| 6–16 | Background + evidence bank | Read the sheet. Each student pulls two pieces of evidence — one historical, one current — onto their organizer. |
| 16–26 | Team prep | Assigned sides. Define 'good job' in one sentence (both teams must). Organizer: claim, three warrants, evidence, steelman of the other side. |
| 26–50 | Structured debate | Opening 3 · cross-ex 2 (questions only) · rebuttal 2 · open exchange 8 · closing 2. Judges score clash and steelman. |
| 50–60 | Written position | Exit ticket paragraph: position, best counter, one cost conceded, one thing you'll do about it. |
Affirmative — this time the good jobs go
AI automates judgment and language — the tasks that made jobs 'good' — and it does so faster than new work can appear.
- Previous automation replaced hands; this replaces the entry-level analyst, writer, and coder.
- A junior with a copilot does the work of three. Firms hire one.
- The ladder loses its bottom rungs: no juniors means no future seniors.
- Speed is the problem. Farm labor took a century to fall; this is years.
Negative — work changes, it doesn't vanish
Every automation wave created more and better work than it destroyed, and there is no fixed amount of work to run out of.
- The lump-of-labor fallacy has been wrong for two hundred years.
- Cheaper output means more demand: more software, more analysis, more design gets done, not less.
- Tasks are automated; jobs are bundles of tasks. The bundle re-forms around the human parts.
- The scarce skills shift toward judgment, taste, trust, and accountability — which people still want from people.
Discussion questions
- 1.openingWhat makes a job a 'good' job? Pay, meaning, security, status — rank them.
- 2.coreIf a model can do 60% of a job's tasks, is the job gone, shrunk, or transformed? Who decides?
- 3.coreHistory says new work appears. What would have to be true for this time to be different?
- 4.coreIf the total number of jobs stays the same but they're worse, is that a problem for the debate?
- 5.closingYou are sixteen. Given everything said, what do you do differently on Monday?
How structured debate runs
Two teams, assigned sides. Opening statements (2 min each), rebuttal huddle (3 min), rebuttals (2 min each), open cross-fire with hands (5 min), closing statements (1 min each). The audience votes on which side argued better — not which side they agree with.
In grades 9–12
Stakes are real: college, jobs, creative work, civil rights. Students can steelman, cross-examine, and write policy.
Preview the full pack
Cover, teacher guide, and every student handout. Print teacher pages once and student pages one per learner.
On a phone, open the PDF in a new tab — in-page previews are unreliable in mobile Safari.
Standards
- CCSS ELA SL.9-10.1 / SL.11-12.1
- CCSS ELA SL.9-10.3 / SL.11-12.3 (evaluate point of view, reasoning, evidence)
- CCSS ELA W.9-10.1 / W.11-12.1 (argument)
- C3 Framework D2.Eco.1 (economic decision-making)
More for grades 9–12
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