What careers are future proof?

[9hdtvey54r]

I am thinking of retraining and wondering what careers do you think are future proof? I think the trades are e.g. plumber, electrician etc - any other thoughts? Thank you.

Anything where you have to actually touch something.

Social worker, prison officer, probation, police

Nothing is completely future proof. I’d say coding etc is particularly vulnerable- AI is already brilliant at coding. Yes some people will still be needed but far fewer.

Safest- anything where the human touch is part of the service- undertaking, midwifery, etc. Also there’s a limit to how many midwives and undertakers we need. Trades but not forever- won’t be long before your broken boiler can diagnose itself and order the parts and robot to fit them. But if you’re retraining then presuambly you’re only going to work another 20-30 years anyway so probably fine.

I think ultimately what will save us is the fact that the economy needs consumers as much as it needs producers. So we’ll either have UBI or create a load of completely unnecessary jobs to keep us all busy and the money going round.

Medical field, any type of first responder, trades like plumbing, electrician, mechanic.

Make up artist
Hairdresser

What robots are very good at is doing a single task repetitively, think manufacturing, robot hover etc. What is currently very hard is designing a single robots to do lots of tasks. For example a hairdresser washes, cuts, dyes and blow dries hair, all different types on different people. So at the moment, hairdressing is pretty safe as you would need 4 different robots to do the one job and that would be prohibitively expensive. Same with domestic cleaning, a robot that can clean a shower, hoover cobwebs off a ceiling, put away dishes and change bedding would be loads of different ones. So you need to consider jobs where you are doing lots of varied tasks.

I think anything artisanal - provided people can afford to buy the products. So baking, brewing, furniture making, ceramics, metalwork, etc. Producing and preparing local, seasonal, ethical food. Things that can be completely bespoke or a bit more ‘mass produced’ on a small scale and are valued because of the human skill involved. not necessarily easy to earn a living from though, especially not in the short term.

Maybe alternative health practices like acupuncture. Hands-on practices rather than NHS style Western medicine. Things people will pay for, basically.

Tax inspector!

Hairdresser. Police. Undertaker.

Yeah but most of them were pretty awful 😂

i used a little underground network of barbers hairdresser and beauticians during Covid

Tbf a fair amount of tax stuff can be done by AI

These are such interesting responses - thank you. I wish I was more practical but I struggle to put a shelf up so I don't think I would be a very good tradeswoman. I'd be interested in training in accountancy but my worry is a lot of financial roles seem to be being taken on by AI.

Best answer!

What about if the AI robot nurse knew every single birth complication possible, what if it could instantly scan for 1,000s of possible birthing problems within seconds. What if it could communicate to mums in 100s of languages. What if it’s work wasn’t affected by an argument with its partner, having a bad day, discrimination or laziness. I wouldn’t rule it out.

My nephew is finishing a physiotherapy degree this summer. The university has already warned them that there are very, very few jobs available.

Due to to the use of AI? ….or other reasons

AI

Accountancy will be taken over by AI for sure

Midwifery.

Even undertakers aren't future proof if behaviours, laws, and customs around the dead change dramatically over time. You just never know how the world will go.

I always cut and colour my own hair and it looks fine

Machine learning, automatic change detection, artificial intelligence. People will always need/want haircuts, grooming, food and shelter too so anything around this.

Healthcare will change a lot with AI

There’s a massive AI opportunity in finance. I’m glad I will be retired before it fully takes over.

Don't think any jobs are completely safe but some jobs will go a lot quicker than others and we will see that happening in the next couple of years

There are quite a lot of professions which AI will likely kill in the next couple of decades. I would not advise anyone to train or retrain in accountancy, finance, or translation. A lot of paralegal work is already being picked up by AI.