Being replaced by AI?

[Ohreallyreally]

Following the Guardians multiple articles about AI wiping out the middle class professional roles in the relatively near future, is anyone else considering to upskill themselves to become more useful for a AI filled world?

Both my and my husbands roles (data analyst and hgv driver) were specifically mentioned so it spiked my anxious side a little 😬

I know it's a ridiculous fear, but is anyone expecting to be replaced by a computer in the next 15 years?

Are you doing anything to future proof your employment?

Learn how to use AI to outsource bits of your job and make you better/give you more time to focus on the bits AI can't do. That's really attractive to companies that want to get into AI.

Think about how the internet changed things, and how reliant we are on it now. Now imagine you could have dreamt up and put together the kind of things that you use daily today, in 1990. You would have been beyond in demand! If you can be anywhere close to that with AI then you'll be ahead of the curve.

I can absolutely say that the things I use it for - it performs better than most of the well paid, university educated people I work with.

Yes, it's on a narrower set of tasks - but on those tasks it outperforms them and in seconds compared to hours/days.

I find it writes better reports, emails, etc.

Maths, analytics, logic, not so great.

I work in construction & AI mistakes cost us £300k last year! We had an industry wide event which confirmed that AI is also costing other large firms too. So everyone has gone back to previous versions of software, older ways of working (from automated lasers back to manual lasers for measuring) and older construction techniques.

I'd say architects are at risk but the bulk of construction is safe for now.

I know it's a zombie thread but it's an interesting discussion. Personally I find the idea of handing everything over to AI utterly joyless. My job involves a lot of site visits and customer engagement, much of it with people who live (and often work) alone. I can't see AI making much of a difference to that part of my role but it could help with mapping, data etc which would help. But what is everyone supposed to do instead? What's the plan for everyone whose roles become obsolete? I feel like a luddite but it makes me want to go back the other way, like the construction companies mentioned above. Also I work for a govt arm's length body, so the chances of us getting anywhere close to full automation in the next 50 years are almost nil. We're still in the early 2010s with our tech.

I anticipate a fairly significant change in the world as a result TBH.

It's going to be like going through the Industrial Revolution.

At the moment I don't necessarily see mass redundancies, but a whole layer of junior roles drying up. All the tasks that people would have had a junior team member for, or a grad, you can just get AI to do them.

It's an interesting quandary sometimes though as I wrote a whole training course with it in about 5 hours on Thursday.

The same thing would have taken me 7-10 working days of effort before so the time saving has been huge.

The downside? I would have used my brain a lot for 7-10 days and now just entered various questions and did lots of copy and pasting.

I can't justify using the 'old way' but despite being a fairly early adopter it gave a hint as to the kind of 'crisis of identify and purpose' we might all have when a good proportion of our job ends up being reduced to glorified data entry.

I even started to worry if we'll see dementia rise because we're not using our brains as much?!