Debate: companies should not use AI to replace entry-level jobs

Intermediate

8 min

A televised campus debate. You are defending the motion against an economist who thinks protecting entry-level work is the wrong instinct.

An intermediate-level session of about 8 minutes. 3 rebuttal rounds against an opponent. Each round runs up to 60 seconds.

The dangerous moment arrives just after you have agreed with something reasonable and cannot find the way back to your own line. It comes quickly here, because this is a motion many people half-agree with in private. Defending it in public means holding a narrow claim — about entry-level work specifically, and about what companies choose to do rather than what the technology can do — and tying every answer back to it. You will be pressed on definitions before anything else: which roles count as entry-level, what replacing means when a team simply stops hiring, whether you are arguing for a law or for a norm. Settle those in your own head first. Conceding a definition halfway through costs more than conceding a point.

Angles worth taking

Define entry-level yourself in the first minute, so the rest of the debate happens on ground you chose.
Concede narrowly and out loud — that is true of this case — then say why your claim still stands.
Argue about what a company decides rather than whether the technology works, since the motion is about the decision.
Bring one example you can describe in detail, a role or a training path, rather than three you cannot.
When a challenge is about consequences instead of principle, answer it in its own terms before returning to yours.

Who is in the room

You play

A student defending the motion

You speak with

A sharp labour economist who argues that protecting entry-level jobs from automation slows growth and hurts the very workers it claims to help

Ready to speak?

Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.

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The format

The motion you defend

Companies should not use AI to eliminate entry-level roles, because those roles are how a workforce is trained.

Rebuttal rounds

Time per round

60 seconds

Modes

Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)

How a roleplay session works

Read your brief

Your role, the situation, and what a good outcome looks like. The counterpart has their own brief, and you do not get to read it.

Open the conversation

You speak first in most scenarios. How you open sets what you can ask for later, which is most of the exercise.

Handle the turn

Somewhere in the middle it stops going your way — a refusal, a counter-offer, a rebuttal you did not prepare for. That moment is the scenario.

Read the report

Outcome, the phrases you used and the ones you missed, fluency and clarity, and the specific line worth rewriting.

What you're scored on

Across every roleplay, the report looks at the same four things — because they are what makes a real conversation work or fail.

Your objective

Defend your position for the whole debate: open clearly, answer every challenge directly, and concede only what you genuinely have to.

Task outcome

Whether you got what the brief asked for: the refund, the extension, the concession, the point conceded.

Appropriacy

Whether the register fits. A complaint that is too soft gets nothing; the same complaint too hard gets a manager and no refund.

Recovery

What you do with the unexpected turn — repair, rephrase, push back, or stall. This is where most of the marks move.

Delivery

Fluency, pronunciation and pace, judged in conversation rather than in a prepared monologue.

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