Let's predict the future. Relatively AI-proof occupations

I've been thinking of this for two reasons: First, my son is a college Sophomore currently focused on sociology and psychology. Obviously, I want the best for him in his professional life.  Second, my wife is a marriage and family therapist with a thriving practice. She loves her job, plans to do it for as long as she can and thinks of it as AI-proof. But then I listened to a podcast where the speaker spoke about psychology being revolutionized. Why navigate your problems for $150/week for 50 minutes when you can buy Psychbot GPT for a song, and have someone to talk to 24/7? Someone who never gets tired or annoyed.  Someone who brings no bias or agenda to the table? Someone with access to a range of experience and knowledge that no human can ever match. So 5 years from now, will my wife's once-thriving practice be reduced to Luddites?

It's going to be real interesting. 

What are the best bets for the post-AI future? 

I think most of the construction trades are pretty safe. 

SV reX said:

I think most of the construction trades are pretty safe. 

Maybe for a while longer than other professions, but they are already 3D printing houses and robot welding has been a thing for a while.  I forsee a time when you upload a .DXF to a group of robots and three months later you have a skyscraper with zero injuries and minimal labor cost.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

That's new construction. It won't do a thing for maintaining the inventory of millions of buildings that already exist. 
 

When the toilet stops working, I promise people will pay anything you ask. 

Construction is understaffed by about 50%.  There are plenty of jobs to share with robots working on pre-engineered factory built projects. 

In reply to SV reX :

The more custom and restoration the better. There's increasing use of higher-end prefab housing. A number of apartment buildings in my area are basically stacks of remotely made modules like oversized storage containers, preplumbed, prefinished and bolted together like legos. I've seen big houses that appear to be site built, but that are modularized in the same manner. 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Yep. I've seen them too. 
 

Still doesn't change the vast quantity of custom structures that exist and will need maintenance and modifications for the next 100 years. 

In reply to SV reX :

Very true, but there will come a time when there are no more of the structures that exist today... at least not in large numbers.  A very long time, but it will come.

Construction is AI-resistant, but a significant portion of it will eventually be AI, I predict.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Not in our lifetimes. Or our kids. 
 

I predict. 

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to SV reX :

Very true, but there will come a time when there are no more of the structures that exist today... at least not in large numbers.  A very long time, but it will come.

There are plenty of 150+ year old houses being lived in Today in the USA. They're not going to suddenly disappear. In parts of Europe, 150 years old is young.  
 

New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. I don't think there will be a time old houses are gone. 

Hollywood writer.   

You can even use AI to do your job, and it's enforced by contract!

Automobile restoration.

I would say Technical Writing, what I do. I've mentioned before even though the information to do "X" is publicly available and indexed by Google, ChatGPT wasn't even close. 

We also have to have devs build us test accounts that aren't live, etc. For example, right now I'm working on a huge new feature (the boy did I mistake thread), I'm going through the test account, making up fake data to go through it to see all the pages. Coming up with a doc outline and draft topics based on what the third-party company came up with along with our own PMs, then having them review, etc. 

What I'm working off right now is an Excel "rainbow doc" with more than 150 questions regarding the product we think support and merchants might have. 

Agree on the construction/trades advice. It's very understaffed and has proven almost immune to technology so far. 

If you're looking for cushy office work I'd consider complex B2B sales. It requires massive amounts of emotional labor, trust, understanding of psychology and a deft touch with ethical issues. As a lay person, I think the skillset will be difficult for AI to replicate. 

Also, just get as wealthy as possible in the next 10 years. For a while at least AI will be a tool for capital and against labor, so make sure you have as much capital as possible.

Medical examiner, Mortician, Necropheliac...

and no I am none of the above...just random answers to the question to reinforce the idea that some folks shouldn't ask questions they don't want answered...not pointing at the OP on that front either.

Anything where you use your hands to fix old crap is going to be safe for a very long time.  Too many variables on old crap to put a robit to it.  No AI can fix an electrical panel where half of it burned up and its all old legacy junk, unplug a drain in a 150 year old house, or do paint and body work on a 1986 Chrysler Batmobile.

Anything where you take a bunch of reasonably predictable inputs and get a predictable output are gone.   HR is a prime case to get gone real fast.  

Things I would go toward:

• Trades
• Engineer if you have hands on experience as well
• Trades
• Equipment operator

Things I would avoid:

• HR
• Lawyering
• Project Management
• Draftsman/Detailing
• Writing of any sort
• Finance
• Health and Safety/Compliance
• Research/Science

The guy that can reprogram and fix the coffee robot at the coffee shop of the future can pick their paycheck.  Same goes for HVAC repair.  Same also goes for people fixing the grid.  I see rednecks in flyover country driving 100k trucks with 25k in mods pulling nice boats all day long every day because they can fix stuff.  The pay in those jobs is only headed one direction.  

I agree on the trades too, extruded Turd Houses that they 3d print are interesting but like ....turd like 

Also I've rehabbed/remodeled houses that were built in a way that I don't recognize as a building practices, and it's happened many times, so that alone makes it AI proof.

Like .... buildings supported by slippers, load bearing sewer pipe and tuna can lids used for roofing . And that's recently 

The trades are something I'm going to encourage with my boys. Every time I contact someone in the trades, they have more work then they can handle.

Programming skills will be in high demand, even with a lot of code being available though AI. I think high-end sales will always be a thing, as well.  Any profession where there's a significant amount of troubleshooting and on-the-fly problem-solving will generally be safer.

Don't become an engineer,  its a great education but a E36 M3ty career. Go for Electronics Tech.

Better work hours, less stress and good chance that you will end up with better pay than the engineer who dumps stuff on your desk.

secretariata (Forum Supporter) said:

Medical examiner, Mortician, Necropheliac...

and no I am none of the above...just random answers to the question to reinforce the idea that some folks shouldn't ask questions they don't want answered...not pointing at the OP on that front either.

I'm curious where you live that having sex with corpses is a paying job.

On 2nd thought, I don't want to know or how you know that's a paying position.

In reply to NOHOME :

I don't know. There are times I have though there were better paths but 25 years in engineering (or engineering management) and I have done ok for my family, seen a lot of cool things, built some interesting stuff, and have enough problem solving skills to cope in life. 
Engineering isnt perfect but you can do a lot of things with it, some will be AI resistant because they are hands on, some help to yield the robot empire. 

z31maniac said:

secretariata (Forum Supporter) said:

Medical examiner, Mortician, Necropheliac...

and no I am none of the above...just random answers to the question to reinforce the idea that some folks shouldn't ask questions they don't want answered...not pointing at the OP on that front either.

I'm curious where you live that having sex with corpses is a paying job.

On 2nd thought, I don't want to know or how you know that's a paying position.

Appalachia can be interesting...and nobody specified paying job.  I see it more as a potential side benefit (for the inclined) of one of the other occupations I listed...

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Why navigate your problems for $150/week for 50 minutes when you can buy Psychbot GPT for a song, and have someone to talk to 24/7? Someone who never gets tired or annoyed.  Someone who brings no bias or agenda to the table?

Psychbot GPT will bring the biases and agendas of the professionals it was trained on to the table (See: COMPAS, Oasys). Also it might not get tired or annoyed but it might go insane if you talk to it for too long (example: early versions of Bing AI - and IIRC they "fixed" it by limiting how long you could talk to it!).

Programming is still looking pretty AI-proof, one reason I originally got into it. AIs are barely passable at throwing together small programs that might work or at least look like they should work, but as the programs grow in size the room for a sooped-up autocomplete to mess up increases, and you very soon reach a breakover point where it makes more sense to program from scratch than to fix the AI's mistakes.

That said, as a programmer I'm not sure I'd recommend it...

All jobs are going to be harder to get into, more intensified, and less lucrative in the future as this high-stakes game of musical chairs progresses.

Bartender