What jobs will never be taken by AI?

[RubyRubyRubyRubay]

So, my son is about to take his GCSE options and although I've been getting him to think of a trade he might like, he really wants to go to uni.

I can think of lots of trades that will be difficult for AI to totally take over:
painting
plumbing
roofing
building
cooking
sports coach

. . . but what about jobs you need a degree for?

I'm struggling to think of any that AI won't eventually decimate.

Any ideas out there?

Paramedic

I wouldn’t be so sure about all trades tbh. I’ve seen one of these laser wall printers in action, its pretty impressive - the same could absolutely be engineered for decorating. Likewise plumbing and building: think of all the factory manufacturing which is done robotically, not such a huge step beyond that.

I think anything which requires humans to actually engage with each other will be difficult to replace. It will be a long time before AI can preempt or second guess the enormous range of human foible.

Not a very exciting topic for a thread I know, but I was really hoping for a few dozen ideas 😩

Either that or, like me, people can't think of any jobs requiring A levels and degrees that are immune to being totally taken over by AI.

I'd imagine surgery
Counselling
Dentistry
Anything involving diplomacy

Psychology/counselling etc. There are AI counsellors online but people need to feel cared for by people.

Nurses, physios, doctors, paramedics, occupational therapists etc.

Surgery will definitely be taken over by AI. It may be over looked by a human surgeon, but AI will definitely be doing that. Also AI doesn’t paint but it’s already disrupting the artistry world, not by huge amount at yet, but ripples have started.

Presuming you're talking about legit uses of AI, almost all regulations around its development make it very clear that there needs to be human oversight and humans have to be the ones that make decisions, not AI. I think there will be some roles that aren't needed because of AI but a lot of 'professional' roles will still exist in some form.

*at the moment

You'd be surprised with some trades although complete automation would be a very long way off. But there's already an AI restaurant/kitchen somewhere in California.

If AI is your concern then some form of IT or robotics engineering could be a good thing to look into

Hairdressing?

I don't think it's even possible right now to understand all of the ways that AI will
impact jobs in the future.

If I think about my job, I can imagine that AI will be able to do some of the analytical / knowledge work at some point, but that's unlikely to mean that my job will immediately disappear or anything like that. There will actually be more work in my specialism over time, so that work will just be slightly different to now.

It makes me think of a meme I saw, it said something like I thought AI would take all of the boring jobs and we could make art instead. So, yeah, I think AI poses both opportunities and risks; it's up to us what we choose to do with it.

I'm encouraging DS to follow what he enjoys and what he's good at for now.

After watching this last night, I don’t think there is anything AI won’t do.

Eventually.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001q1zl

Shareholder in an AI company.

100% guaranteed to survive.

Trades won’t be taken over by AI but they are absolutely ripe for automation. Why employ four brickies on a job when you can employ jiust one whose job it is to oversee the robotic bricklayer?

Remember robots don’t need to do a better job than humans. They don’t even need to do it faster than humans. They just need to do it cheaper. And the moment it’s cheaper for a robot to do your job then your job no longer exists.

I'm not so sure. There's money pouring into them at the moment but a lot won't survive. The development of AI is massively expensive and it's very hard to generate enough revenue to cover costs.

Trades...

Doctors, lawyers and computer programmers definitely going to disrupted by AI (there may well be human oversight but far fewer humans will be needed).

Ironically, Fatima should probably stick to the ballet dancing and forget cyber if she doesn't want to be AI replaced.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54505841

Wiping bums of fighty adults with learning disabilities.

But there's a massive shortage of healthcare staff - let AI do the bits that it can do best, and humans do the bits that they can do best.

AI will come for those middle class professions that were immune from the negative effects of low skilled mass migration, eg lawyers, journalists.

So get ready for increasingly panicked cries of how AI must be controlled and restricted to shield us from its "harmful potential".

Whilst all those tradesmen, factory workers, retail staff etc who for the last 20 years have been ignored and called lazy little Englanders give a wry smile and grab the popcorn.

Exactly this! AI has to be cheaper than human labour. But there's the catch - AI in itself is a "product", that has to be sold at a maximum profit. Also, AI processing demands incredible amounts of data processing infrastructure (cloud storage is expensive), which needs enormous amounts of electricity (even more expensive), which only adds to the cost. So, I don't think we will see AI-powered robotic bricklayers anytime before we crack nuclear fission and other ways to obtain cheap energy in unlimited quantities.

A lot of IT jobs would appear ripe for replacement with AI but in reality it is used as a tool.
Much like how back in the day we had to build everything from scratch but now we use frameworks.

I only work as checkout staff but could AI serve on a till and then take the till off take it into the office count it, bank it & then send the money off to the bank? I know we have self checkouts in places (we don't) but someone still needs to count those tills

Saying "What jobs won't be taken by AI?" is a bit like, a few decades ago, saying "What jobs won't be taken by computers?" Life changes and evolves. AI is a tool. Jobs exist today that never existed before computers became commonplace.

Just get him to study what interests him.