The Jobs AI Won’t Take Yet

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The BBC article “The Jobs AI Won’t Take Yet” lists jobs that computers won’t fulfill for some time despite claims that AI will replace workers.

There have been concerns that new machines will take human jobs ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution yet people have always triumphed. However, some jobs are now being seriously threatened by robots. According to a recent Goldman Sachs research, content-generating AI might perform one-fourth of the job currently performed by humans. In addition, automation might cost the EU and US 300 million jobs.

However, Martin Ford, author of Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything (see our Book Tip), believes that there are three “safe zones”:

  • Genuinely creative jobs, where coming up with new ideas and building something new is important
  • Jobs that require sophisticated interpersonal relationships, like nurses, business consultants, and investigative journalists
  • Jobs that require lots of mobility, dexterity, and problem-solving abilities in unpredictable environments, like electricians, plumbers, or welders.

The safe approach for everyone right now? Think what kind of tasks within your job will be replaced or will be better done by computer or AI; and what is your complementary skill? Also important to note, an advanced education or a well-paying job do not protect against AI takeover. Ford illustrates that the future of the white-collar worker is more threatened than that of the Uber driver, because we don’t have self-driving cars yet, but AI can certainly write reports.

Further reading on BBC or the full report from Goldman Sachs (20 pages)