Deskilling and Its Impact on Job Quality, ETTravelWorld

Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI, released a research paper earlier this month that deserves the attention of everyone in the travel industry. Not because it predicts mass job losses; it doesn’t. But because it names, with real usage data from millions of AI conversations, a quieter threat that most of our industry still isn’t talking about: deskilling.

The paper introduces a metric called “observed exposure” that measures not just what AI could theoretically do to a job, but what it is actually doing right now. The headline finding sounds reassuring: unemployment in AI-exposed occupations has not risen meaningfully since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. But there is an early warning signal buried in the data that deserves far more attention: hiring of young workers aged 22 to 25 has slowed by roughly 14 per cent in exposed occupations. They are not being fired. They are simply not being hired.

What caught my eye, though, was that Anthropic’s earlier Economic Index report specifically used travel agents as a case study of deskilling. Their argument is straightforward: when AI handles the complex part of a role, like intricate itinerary planning, what’s left for the human shifts to routine tasks like processing payments. The title stays, while expertise erodes.

This is something we have been watching closely. Last year, a survey conducted among 500 urban frequent travellers, across seven Indian cities, showed that 59 per cent of Indian travellers reject purely automated trip planning. Only 11 per cent said they were comfortable with fully AI-generated itineraries in a survey of 500 urban frequent travellers across seven Indian cities found itineraries. What struck us most was not the number itself but the reason behind it: 40 per cent actively distrust online-only platforms due to misleading pricing, hidden charges, and poor customer support. They want the speed and convenience of technology. But they also want the confidence that comes from a human in the loop.

Anthropic’s research, which now covers millions of real AI conversations mapped to over 20,000 work tasks, validates this at a macro-economic level. The data shows that AI is far from reaching its theoretical potential. In computer and mathematical occupations, for instance, only 33 per cent of theoretically automatable tasks are actually being automated. But the gap between what AI can do and what it is doing is closing fast. And the jobs most at risk are not the ones where AI replaces everything. They are the ones where AI absorbs the most valuable, skill-intensive tasks and leaves behind the lowest-value work. For travel, this should be a wake-up call. Our industry is one of the few where the quality of the recommendation is the product. A piece of code either runs or it does not. A customer service ticket either gets resolved or it does not. But a genuinely good travel itinerary requires cultural sensitivity, lived experience, and the ability to read between the lines of what a traveller actually wants. That is precisely the kind of expertise that gets eroded when AI handles the complex planning and humans are left to process bookings.

Thomas Cook’s India Holiday Report confirms the demand side of this equation. 85 per cent of Indians plan to increase holiday frequency. They are moving from rushed group tours to immersive, experience-led travel. The 25-to-35 age group, which made up 62 per cent of our own survey respondents, wants speed, flexibility, and personalisation. But not at the cost of authenticity or control.

I believe the travel industry now faces a choice between two paths. One is of commoditisation, where AI generates itineraries at scale, strips human expertise from the process, and every destination starts to sound the same. The other keeps humans at the centre and uses AI as the infrastructure that makes human knowledge more accessible, more contextual.

This is not a philosophical argument. It is a product design choice with real business consequences. The platforms that win will be the ones that use AI to handle the mundane, so humans can do more of what makes travel personal, not less.

Anthropic’s researchers conclude their paper by calling for humility. And we know that past predictions about technology and jobs have a poor track record. The real impact of AI on travel may not show up in unemployment data. It will show up in the quality of

recommendations, in the erosion of destination expertise, and in a generation of young travel professionals who never get the chance to build the skills the industry needs.

There is still time to make the right call. But the window is not wide open.

The author is the Co-Founder of Alike, unifiled travel platform.

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