I work in a research support role in Higher Education. I am a qualified professional, but I have a bad feeling that AI and the current financial crisis in HE, the lack of return on degrees and the general cost of living crisis does not bode well for my career in this area long term. Am currently earning c.£40k pa. Would like to maintain this if at all possible. There's a lot of talk in my sector about upskilling in areas like data analysis, coding etc - but tbh I don't know if there's 20-30 years' mileage in that either given the rate of progress in AI - may be jobs now but give it 5 years and the core tasks will be automated imo.
I'm 40, so if I make a career change I would like it to be long term and therefore AI-proof. I have a humanities degree (well 2 actually!) so outside of my (probably dying) sector, I am not an easy sell. So I'm thinking (a) what can computers never do for us? (b) what still makes decent money? and (c) what am I actually good at?
My first thought is various things around child-rearing (I love being a parent and looking after my little ones' friends). Teaching looks like a crapshoot at the moment though, plus extensive and expensive retraining required. So I wondered about child-minding/nannying. Concerns there are does it pay enough, how difficult is it running your own business/doing tax returns/dealing with government subsidy (I have always been salaried before). Also my DP works from home sometimes and does not enjoy kids as much as me (though would probably prefer it to me being unsalaried!)
Any other ideas? I mean people will always need to eat and I love to cook, but I couldn't make beautiful celebration cakes etc - I'm not at all artistic. I used to work in a pub and loved it, but not enough money in that (esp not these days as drinking and esp drinking out declines).
What else can't the machines take away from us???