AI proof careers

[VenusClapTrap]

DC are in years 10 and 8, so A-level and university choices coming up in the next few years. Eldest quite fancies engineering or architecture. Youngest doesn’t have a clue.

The more I look into architecture, the more I worry that AI is going to impact this career path, so I’m not sure it’s a wise choice at the moment, especially as it’s such a long course.

But is engineering any better? Is anything any safer? How can we best advise our children?

An application due to be released later this year will effectively shut down all call centres. There simply won't be any business need for them to exist

I must say, I find this hard to believe. Surely Humans will still be needed for complex queries. I am fed up of the chat bot things on banks etc where my individual query has not be predicted and so I don't fit in to a box that can answer my query and I also can't get through to an effing human to explain. I think humans will still be needed for complicated or non-standard queries.

There would still be a lock mechanism and a niche of specialising in locks. It's just that locksmiths would have to broaden the scope of their work.

Personally I think there will likely always be people who want to lock their homes with a regular key, though.

And I guess since most parents won't have jobs by then, they will be able to be at home to supervise the kids on their screens?

Faces and thumb prints, both of which can easily be harvested from a person's social media etc . . .

All this says is that you have a very poor grasp of what teachers and schools do nowadays.

I wouldn’t worry too much. We’re always being promised things that never appear. As someone once said, inventions usually “remain ten years away forever.” Most likely people will be doing the same sh*tty jobs fifty years into the future. When it comes to the news, extremism sells. Whether it’s very good or very bad, it catches people’s attention. President Nixon declared war on cancer in the early ‘70s, and here we are fifty years later and it’s still a mass killer. We’ve made virtually no progress at all. I used to read books on the future back in the early 2000s. Many of the predictions were for the mid-2020s (which was then twenty years into the future). Virtually nothing the authors predicted has come true. We’re not walking on Mars, no one has an android in their house doing all the chores, and the sea hasn’t flooded London.

I’ll believe all the hype when I see it. When I’m driven to airport by a self-driving taxi, and we’re all on a UBI, then I’ll believe it.

That's EXACTLY what is coming.

"Live" events will be "enhanced" by the use of this tech. So as an example, Taylor Swift could be in concert in several different venues all at the same time. Nobody would be told who is really seeing her as opposed to say a hologram ( which do actually exist and are also something that has serious money being pumped into development) and as bizarre as it sounds, the audience likely won't care, there will be a buzz created by simply being exposed to the tech.

Stage crews would fall into the category of manual labour, so won't be effected as much. But the lighting, sound and other jobs WILL be massively affected by A.I.

The engineers who use A.I to enhance their ideas and shows, will push out those don't use the technology. It will be a race to get the most from the applications.

Go on YouTube and watch the short film "The Heist", it's ENTIRELY generated using Beta level A.I. yes there are some graphic issues, but it gives you a hit of what is coming.

It's already happening....jobs are already being lost to ai.

Cancer survival rates have doubled in the UK in the last 50 years.

There's a blood test to detect early stage cancer almost ready now, so that is likely to vastly improve survival rates.

And self driving taxis are already a thing in big cities like San Francisco and Dubai.

The problem with a UBI is that it’s universal. In other words, it’s communism! One of the main reasons people build a career, pursue promotion, save their money, etc, is so they don’t have to live around the worst members of society. Obviously I don’t mean those on low incomes. I mean the violent, dysfunctional, anti-social types who ruin their neighbour’s lives. If people like that are also put on a UBI, you won’t be able to escape them.

But you'd still need people to build the system that produces the show and displays the hologram. Even if it's all fake, you still need someone to put the speakers and lights out, connect them up, hang them off the rigs. And that sort of work is likely more labour intense than a traditional show where you've just got a band, instruments and more basic sound/lights.

Likewise all those firework shows that are made with drones not fireworks. They need people to set out thousands of drones even if they're all programmed by AI.

No, I am a qualified teacher although I no longer teach. It says a lot for what government think teachers do. I wasn't the one saying AI could replace feedback + marking, that's what Phillipson said!

Possibly, interesting as I hadn't factored that in

Exactly.

Those manual jobs will be better protected than others. As I said, A.I won't replace any jobs, but people who don't use it won't be able to compete with those who do.

But ai is already replacing jobs.

Obviously not every job will disappear but many will. I'm shocked at how we are sleepwalking into this and how many people are being so incredibly naive about the impact it will have.

I think there will be a growth in craft, handmade items, limited edition print books, paper making, artisan items and self sufficiency. These will be the expensive, high end products that can't be replicated- imperfect items that can be traced back to humans.
I'd advise your children to learn these kind of things and also to become librarians, vinyl LP curators. People will be searching for authenticity and be willing to pay for it.

I can see why you would think this...but if people aren't working or have lost their jobs, will these things really be a priority?

@Comedycook these might be survival skills...
Although I think we are not factoring in the amount of electricity and water coolant AI requires. Last week the UK was close to running short of electricity, people underestimate just how much resource AI consumes. Our infrastructure is woefully inadequate for what's required.

Hmm I can't see there being a huge call for vinyl LP curators tbh and making a decent wage in crafty handmade items is incredibly difficult and hard work. If people aren't desperate for hand made paper now then I don't know why they would be in the future.

I think OP it's impossible to future proof because no one can really predict exactly how things will go. Plenty of people change direction career wise at some point in their life anyway, if you have a degree and plenty of experience the chances are you will be able to move into something else or retrain if required. Let them do what they want to do - unless it's work in a call centre, that I would advise against.

A lot of what PP are citing as "jobs AI can't do" are in fact things that AI can't currently do.

They're not actually jobs unless there are people earning enough to be able to pay a human being to do them.

I agree.

I work in a call centre and I'm not concerned for this reason.

If I had a pound for every time a customer has told me they do not want their issues dealt with by AI then I would be a millionaire. Yes, businesses could save money with AI but they won't retain customers.

We already use some AI at work but I don't think the entire workforce will be wiped out any time soon.

You really don't understand what is coming.

Nobody will be phoning a call centre to speak to an A.I robot. Nobody will be phoning call centres at all, there won't be any need.

The A.I will be embedded within the end user platform, and WILL be able to understand and provide answere to any queries. The amount of information available to the user will render further contact unnecessary. Imagine a website that is "intelligent", where you don't read information, but interact with it, where the site "understands" your concerns and is tailored uniquely to just you. Your access to a website would look different to my access to the same site because the A.I "knows" what each user wants.

I know it's a strange concept, but that's the level of change that’s coming.

The world will always need plumbers and doggy day care.

I'm a dominatrix. The nature of my job is fairly fiddly (from shibari rope work to instruments like the St Andrew's cross) and my clients are the type who pay specifically for a human dynamic/experience. Many are in sensitive industries and require 110% discretion... an AI-free environment can't be hacked, or data breached. So I think I'm safe for another 20 years!

I know someone who graduated from Cambridge in 2012, having planned to become a teacher but finding she wasnt suited to staff room politics she went to work as a live-in housekeeper instead. She started on 24k. After 3-4 years she applied through an agency to work as a senior housekeeper for a wealthy family on 45k, and then trained as a household manager (aka a butler) when they offered to sponser her training.

That is a high 5 figure to 6 figure salary job (average is 50k-70k, but £150k and higher isn't unusual if you work outside the UK and are managing properties). It's fairly tech proof, too, as the wealthy tend to be incredibly suspicious of invasive technology and prefer to have trusted, highly paid humans handling their business for them.

I would advise young people to look for jobs that cater to the wealthy, if possible. PAs, nannies, bodyguards, drivers, household staff, estate managers, wealth planners, private tutors who will travel with families or work with SEN/homeschooled rich kids, auction house experts/fine antiques, specific sales industries where a 1-to-1 sales experience is expected... all these jobs will pay at least £40-£60k once you have 5+ years experience and are known as a safe, discreet pair of hands.

There are obvious downsides, not least that they are demanding employers and some families can be absolute slave-drivers, but the growth of new money in countries like China and Africa has opened up a wealth of opportunities. If you find the right employer they also tend to be incredibly loyal to their staff. My friend knows someone who was gifted the deeds to a £450k english cottage by his American employers when he took early retirement in his 50s, having worked for them as a butler (in the States) for nearly 30 years!