So what jobs are AI proof then?

[StrongJamie]

Based on recent media report we are facing an imminent (?) AI revolution.

I imagine that doctors, teachers, lecturers, accountants and civil servants can easily be replaced by AI and tailored professional AI software. I am guessing that jobs that require intricate physical handling are less at risk as it would be expense to mass produce the Hardware. Hospital doctors are more at risk than ward nurses but less than GPs who soon will be obsolete.

It will be a good while until they can mass produce robots that do humans jobs, which require a lot of running around and haptic skill but some jobs don't need a person, they just need the right software (e.g. GPs).

I imagine it like this, you log onto your GP AI service, they know all your medical history and also all the up to date epidemiological data of your neighbourhood as well as your biomarkers, pulse, heart rate etc uploaded via your smart watch continuously. The system knows about all possible diseases and conditions and based on your biomarkers and symptoms knows how to signpost you for further tests or what to prescribe. Job done, no more GP.

Teachers? No need. Ai robots, virtual or physical deliver synchronous teaching the rest is done online.

Please pick holes in my assumptions or add to the list of soon to be obsolete professions.

Which ones are ai bullet proof?

AI has just been introduced in my industry. It kind of works as a tool for someone who does not understand the industry and is totally new to it. But even then it can not replace them. It may be a threat in the future, but we are a long way from that.
I would not try and guess what industries will be unaffected by AI in 30 to 40 years time. That is a fools game.
And AI will not replace GPs. I can see a GP surgery running with AI for minor things and GPs for unusual illnesses and where a human is needed. So maybe one GP to a surgery with a nurse, a phlebotomist and the rest AI.

My DD is a creative (at art-school right now). My fear is that AI art will remove a lot of the low-level, bread-and-butter jobs which currently serve as an "apprenticeship" for designers/illustrators/animators/portraitists/fine-artists etc. Sure, there's lots of room for humans to do the really expert/novel creative stuff (at least in my lifetime), but how many people will be able to get there when the first few rungs of the ladder are removed?

And AI will not replace GPs. I can see a GP surgery running with AI for minor things and GPs for unusual illnesses and where a human is needed. So maybe one GP to a surgery with a nurse, a phlebotomist and the rest AI.

Probably add some staff with psychiatry/psychology/counselling skills.

I don't think teachers will be taken over by robots, but TAs might be? Not soon though.

Chefs must be fairly AI proof, but junior chefs maybe aren't. The ones doing just prep and following recipes to the letter etc.

Counsellors / therapists I think are quite AI proof as you would think you'd need a human for that, but who knows?

@ErrolTheDragon I think counselling will mainly be provided by AI. Young people already receive counselling through text for example, many prefer it than seeing someone face to face. Psychiatrists though will still exist I think.

I saw a demonstration of an AI counsellor that was actually pretty good.

Which model? GPT-3.5 or 4 (which is also used by Bing)? The cutoff date for model training for GPT-4 was September 2021, so you can ask it what it thinks the best strategy Putin could use to win in Ukraine and it won’t have a clue.

AI will replace the lower level legal work.
But I think in many cases AI will be a support tool. So less people employed, but those employed overseeing AI and dealing with more complex or quirky cases/pieces of work.
Take journalism, AI can write the clickbait, beauty and regurgitating government press release articles. But humans will still do the more complex journalism.

We don’t have this now and it didn’t take no Skynet to murder investigative journalism. Just costs and lowest common denominator click bait churnalism.

Also, I’d say even what journalism we have now is dogshit writing without even the benefit of having someone actually chase a hard story with intrigue.

We already destroyed most media ourselves, so AI hasn’t really got much to plunder there.

I think us foster carers are pretty safe.

I’m a lawyer and chair a committee on Ethics and AI. I anticipate that the research element of our jobs will become obsolete quite quickly, along with risk assessment, training development, budget creation etc.

in the future we will get paid for interpretation and analysis

Artists used to draw with pencils and paint. Then cameras came along and suddenly people could create images with virtually no skill. Artists were outraged. But photography hasn’t put a stop to art, it’s just a tool to create it. Then computer software came along and helped you to draw perfect shapes and select colours digitally, and people said again that it was the end of art. But it wasn’t - it was just another tool. So AI isn’t going to be the end of art either - it’ll just be another tool.

I do agree that the small cheap jobs where people have no budget will get done by AI instead of paying artists a few pennies. But it won’t affect the artists who work for clients with bigger budgets and are willing to pay for quality and precision and artistic vision that AI simply doesn’t have.

I'd be very afraid of it replacing teachers. I can see the return of remote learning if the government aren't willing to fund schools properly. Teachers broadcasting from home to hundreds of NT children also at home, with SEND students perhaps attending a small setting to recieve some additional support. They type their answers in and it's marked by AI which feeds into the next lesson. Parents get a daily report of their child's scores.

People might like it because it sounds cheap. Minimises bullying and disruptive behaviour. No arguments about uniforms or detentions. No glue sticks needed.

I hope it's not the future that awaits my children. Fucking dystopian.

Between AI and robotics you could probably, eventually, make a case for almost any job or human function being replaced
Good. We’ve been promised for decades that all of these computer based tools would make our lives easier so we could work less and have more leisure time. But in actual fact the working week has hardly reduced at all in the last century. We are undoubtedly more productive but we don’t actually work any less. It’s about time that people were able to work a four day week because technology assists them to do the same amount of work in a shorter period of time.

AI will replace most modelling jobs

I hope you're right about that, and I can certainly see it going that way.

My DD was mainly a photographer growing up (hence my username) and over her lifetime an interesting thing happened in the world of cameras. Smartphones and Insta-Filters led to the complete collapse of the market for "entry level" cameras (why buy one when your phone can do it?) Now that is starting to affect sales of high-end/pro-level cameras; it's a helluva step up from a phone camera to fully-fledged modern DSLR with all the buttons and dials. So photography has become much more widespread/accessible (yay!) at the expense of mastery/skills (boo!)

I can see AI art being the "smartphone + filters" of traditional creative subjects. Not bad, just... different.

What do you mean by 'modelling jobs' ... that term could mean many different things.

We will still have instagramers and famous people modelling. But I agree with other types of modelling.

The argument was more or less the same when photography came about, as people no longer needed to have someone paint a realistic scene or portrait of a person. They could just get a photograph.

In some ways, it meant the death of that kind of art since people could see the real place, not a skilled interpretation of it in oil paint on canvas. But, human art is still valued, and while we have phones with replacements for point and shoots, there will always be the market for professional photographers and their equipment and skills, since most people can't frame a photo for shit, even with the best AI enhanced smartphone.

A lot of AI fear-mongering is along the lines of "if machines can do X better than us, why do X at all?" which, in the artistic pursuits, is a dumb argument generally. Chess has been "solved" by computers since '97, and yet it's never been more popular.

It will replace judges, but think about the data it's trained on (racist and sexist police force arrest records etc) and that's a huge problem.

It will replace judges

I doubt it.

But - if and when its completely accurate - it might replace some lawyers. Currently it's hard for a normal person to correctly interpret the law and to get what should be quite simple legal agreements drafted. This makes the law harder than it should be to access.

Interesting thoughts! It will be interesting to see how things turn out (and whether DD can get a job...)

Yes very true Switch.

I wonder if the role of an AI judge would be different. Rather than base a decision on what seems fair and just, it could be based on factors like - with this defendant's age, sex, background and crime, what's the likelihood that they pose a danger to others? What's the likelihood that they will reoffend? How much actual harm have their actions caused? How much is prison/community service/a fine/something else (restorative justice? Therapy? Support to solve the underlying reasons for the crime?) likely to affect their future actions, and how? What is the long term likelihood of each outcome?

Currently we base it on fairness, retribution, punishment and justice because those are basically the things that make sense to us, and we're not fortune tellers, but maybe an AI model would completely change the justice system and start looking at how crime might be able to be mitigated going forward rather than just having a roughly one size fits all policy which is adjusted by humans.

Human judges are terrible for biases. Make sure you don't get stood before one that hasn't had lunch yet etc.

This.

If you don’t use a computer for the main aspect of your work, or if you’re a creative, you have nothing to fear from AI. If you’re not a creative and you do your work on a computer, you’re fucked, and that is going to include a massive proportion of middle class white collar, administrative, clerical, analytical & financial workers. As an obvious example, huge banks & accounting business which currently employ tens of thousands of people will in future employ a few hundred techies.
It’s only a matter of time until my job is replaced by AI, it’s inevitable. I just hope I can hang on until I can afford to retire.