Will your job exist in the next 10/20 years?

[LittleRedintheHood]

I work in allied medical sector, so my job will exist but with the caveat that AI can increasingly do a lot of diagnosis via scans and decision making from this.

AIBU to ask if you think your job/sector of work will survive in a similar role to now?

Would you recommend a young person to start a career in your sector?

In my job I would say you need to up-skill clinically in extra qualifications and embrace the technology before others to stay ahead of the inevitable changes already coming with AI in the medical field.

I think so - out of interest I asked ChatGPT a question related to my job yesterday and it told me to ask a professional in my field for the answer, so hopefully I'm good for a little while yet 😅 That said, we'd be foolish if we thought we were immune to AI/automation - we're definitely going to have to keep adapting and making the best use of it.

I think AI will increasingly take over the routine stuff, but will still need sense-checking by a human.

I’m currently upskilling myself on AI in the hope that will then get me through the next 15 years before I can retire.

I’m pretty close to AI as a field. If you’d asked people in the know 20 years ago what would be automated first it would have been manual labour.

Turns out, AI in its recent incarnation (generative models) is exceptionally good at cognitive and creative tasks. The smart money is on white collar jobs being impacted way more.

We may not see outright replacement by AI for a while. But we will pretty rapidly see AI-plus-humans being way, way more productive than just humans. This will cause job impact - you likely won’t need as many people to accomplish what you need to do, in many cognitive / knowledge / creative domains.

One example - AI tooling plus graphic design skills are going to out produce what multiple graphic designers could make before. Repeat for many job categories.

I work in HE admin and there's no doubt that I am replaceable. Although the future of HE in it's current form is decidedly uncertain anyway. I've got to last another 11 years before retirement.

Chat GPT certainly doesn't have the intellect yet .

I was thinking of future careers.

I often advise new trainees who are starting out in my role- as to where I think I could have been cleverer in my career choices.
I then try and predict what the job will increasingly look like and what skills they should be thinking about (that Uni doesn't seem to prepare them for).

There's such an increase in demand for YP for economic/finance degrees- but surely in future AI will affect this sector?

It's often only when you work in a job you can see where the road ahead lies.

Do others have a pessimistic outlook ?

Yes. I design villages as a town planner, strategic planning for a house builder. Love it and very well paid.

Oh definitely! I'm a software/infra engineer and AI can write code much quicker. It's wrong a lot now, but might not be anymore.
There will be 'less' jobs, not more, but to me the essence of my job is decision making and design. I have good people skills so not really worried about the future.

No way a mental health nurse is being replaced by AI, I don't think!

I'm a prison officer of 30 years. If AI can do my job it can put me out to grass and crack on! 🤔😂

Yes. (Well, not mine, I'll be retired!). I write scientific software. When I was at school and we were discussing what we'd do when we grew up, I said I'd do a job that hadn't been invented yet ... I was about right, I was among the first in my area doing this outside of academia, in the mid 80s.

We use machine learning methods now, as well as other more conventional code but on faster machines so we can tackle problems that used to be intractable. The 'AI' is nowhere near knowing what questions to ask; the need for human intelligence in this area is increasing.

Could AI investigate fraud?

It's very interesting that AI seems to least threaten the creators.
So there's some justification to the Computer Science degree popularity as to future proofing a career.
The white collar jobs that involve routine work threatened seem to be the accountants, insurance? legal?

Some types, I'd have thought - if it has the relevant data it might be trained to detect dodgy pattens.

I'm a midwife so can see my role still being around in years to come. Whilst we do use technology, it's still our midwifery skills that we use the most and I can't see how AI could replace these.

Therapist here. There are computerised programmes for manualised therapy, but imo people want to talk to another person, even if that's online or written. I don't think AI could 'bear witness' in the same way, even if it could mimic a human conversation. Hopefully, anyway!

Mine is already on the wain and that is librarianship. People can find out information for themselves now easily compared to when I qualified in the very early 1990’s. Crockfords Clerical Directory anyone? No didn’t think so, you just Google the Church these days. Plus actual book borrowing has decreased with online activity, kindles.

I'm training for law. Which I think will increasingly be ai in the early stages. Which makes me worry that whilst ai takes over the earlier easier stuff- how will the experts become experts? See also teaching. Or office work- particularly billing and call centre stuff. Hr. Accounting. The early easy stuff can easily be appointed to ai. Whilst the experts deal with the complicated stuff- but then the long view leads to lack of experts.

Hopefully opticians will still be in demand.

I disagree! In the same ilk as therapy (whereby the advice isn't the goal- a large part of it is human contact)librarianship is for me firmly human alone. A love of firstly reading, of which follows a love of proper research is one that only humans can inspire. Librarians in the main. The AI alternative does not deliver the same, not even a shadow, of the former service.

Nah, community nurse, mainly palliative care in the home. Unless the AI can deliver hands on nursing I think I’m safe.

Yes, it will still exist. Producing and managing marketing events. We've already rejected Chat GPT and the like for producing content, which is easy to spot and dull as dust.

I've yet to meet the computer that can physically put a trade stand together, mend a lighting array, assemble a good presentation, talk the speaker out of stage fright and retrieve a DHL shipment that's gone to Rotterdam rather than Rotherham.

Definitely. I'm in sales, business development specifically.

AI can't replace human interaction. It can't build relationships, it can't get in a car and drove 115 miles to go soothe troubles, it can't listen and understand the human emotion behind conversation.

Until we have sentient AI and humans that don't require humans, my role is safe.

In my industry, the only people that aren't safe are the machine feeders. Even the technicians further down the line are safe, until physical technology catches back up with AI.

This with bells on.

You can spot an AI written post on LI from a thousand yards if you've half a brain for example. Key things are missed, it reads perfectly perhaps, and the content may even be there... but it's too perfect, it misses humanity and humans are exceptionally good at spotting that without realising. And in my experience, they don't like it.

It may surprise you to know that CompSci graduates have one of the highest unemployment rates. More so now that the media has pushed 'coding coding coding' as a route to getting a cushy, well-paid job leading to a flood of graduates.

There are various reasons but no two 'Computer Science' degrees are the same, not all are rigorous. I've interviewed so many graduates who not only couldn't program but couldn't reason logically when given something unexpected.
Below review might be of interest:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a8189a5e5274a2e8ab54853/ind-16-5-shadbolt-review-computer-science-graduate-employability.pdf

The reality is that we do a lot of talking to people and research in addition to just writing code at higher levels. We have to deal with complexity, both human and technical. We also have to constantly learn new things, have a lot of patience to deal with problems. 'Writing code' is really the easiest part of the job and I'm quite happy for AI to go ahead and do that! It can never replace the need for people who can manage process, communicate and build relationships.

FYI the majority of devs aren't working on 'AI' (actually you probably need a specialised Master's or PhD to develop the algorithms) just boring old CRUD apps that are the same thing.

I'm pretty sure Foster Carers will be needed in 10-20 years time. Sadly there are more DC needing a good home to live in safely than there are carers to provide one.