The Last Jobs on Earth

I think about the future a lot for the sake of my future children. I wonder what they'll do with their lives. I wonder how they'll make money to support themselves. Which projects will they solve, which achievements will they attain?

The advent of AI is scaring a lot of people. It's taking jobs and the mere idea of AI and the direction it's heading does not lend much hope.

Yes, it's awesome. It's a powerful, useful tool. But maybe too useful? Powerful enough for employers to be able to lay off dozens, hundreds, thousands of employees. What are the employees supposed to do?

There's the idea of "prompt engineer" spinning around lately. Someone who can write a good prompt will get what they want out of the AI. But writing a prompt is as simple as asking for a favor; anyone can do it. You don't need the title of "engineer" for that. No one calls themselves a Googling Engineer. You just search for whatever you need.

So I don't see "prompt engineer" as a viable long-term job title, though it might play a small role while laggards are still trying to figure out how ChatGPT works.

What jobs will exist when AI can do everything then?

I believe more and more in the value of human connections. As AI and other robots and technologies take over everything, I think there will be an increased demand for "realness". Unless you're a google bot crawling and indexing this website, chances are, you're probably human. And you probably would prefer to read articles written by another human. That's going to become an increasingly scarce phenomenon on the internet. An AI could write this article in 3 seconds. But because I'm human, I'll take a long time to do it and poor my real thoughts and feelings about the future into the words that I'm typing. I wonder if it'll make any kind of noticable difference...

Human connection will be huge, way more important than it is right now. It'll be in short supply, which will drive its value.

Influencers

I think about the explosion of influencers in recent years. That never used to be a thing. YouTube has been around for a decade and a half, and no one really did the influencer thing until Twitch and TikTok came into existance. Suddenly, you have a bunch of people curious about the mundane details of the lives of other people. Why? Because we lack real-life connections. At least someone on the internet can make us feel more connected, especially if the viewer can chat with the influencer in real time, like in streams.

Entrepeneurs

I don't know if I'll encourage my kids to go to college. College has a decreasing ROI in terms of higher costs as well as lower returns due to the oversaturation of people with college degrees. At a certain point, the ROI will be negative even for the formerly profitable degrees (not Latin or art).

As AI takes over jobs, I see the need for my future kids to create their own jobs. The best job security comes from being in charge of your own fate. As an entrepeneur, you'll never be fired due to office politics or not adhering to return-to-work policies. As an entrepeneur, you'll live or die by your ability to provide value...REAL value...to other people. As an employee, you can find jobs that will pay you to do nothing, and while those jobs are temporarily great, they do lead to exsistential crises eventually. Humans want to matter, and they want their work to matter.

Social Coaches

Dating coaches, but also friendship coaches. I'm surprised this doesn't exist already, to be honest. There are a lot of dating coaches, I've heard. And that's because people are desparate for connection. But a romantic connection isn't the only type.

Teachers of all kinds

Gym coaches, guitar teachers, backetball coaches, language coaches, mathematics tutors. People long to be taught by someone who knows what they're talking about because they've personally succeeded in whatever the thing is. And people want real, accurate feedback to help them improve.

I've tried using ChatGPT to help improve my guitar picking speed. What a joke. It gave me a hundred different suggestions because it can't see what I'm doing. It doesn't know what I need to improve. It has no eyes. Maybe if I was a prompt engineer, I could get a useful response out of it... No, I think there will always be a need for educators.

Not medical jobs...well okay, maybe, but they'll be different

I've even asked ChatGPT what jobs will be available in the future when AI has taken all of our jobs. Chief among its answers were those related to healthcare. I'm not convinced that healthcare jobs will be impervious to theft by AI, which contradicts my point about the need for human connection, I know. AI is already solving medical problems that doctors and researching have been failing to solve for decades. I think AI will be able to diagnose a problem better than any doctor. After all, it has the entirety of the internet at its fingertips.

What I do think will exist will be jobs related to helping patients cope with medical issues. Something that AI will never be able to replicate authentically. AI will never be a shoulder to cry on after giving bad news. People will need to be there to provide that support.

So...psychologists, really. Therapists. But also something else, something similar but less perscriptive and more just...there. We'll need people who are "there" for other people. I'm not sure exactly what that will look like, but I'm sure it will be needed.

Final Thoughts

Humans crave problems. We're designed to solve problems, we get a little dopamine hit when we do it, it feels good. That's all video games are really, problems, and we love them. Nobody wants to live in a universe with no problems left to be solved.

AI threatens to alleviate all problems, which is scary to think about. If we're lucky, we'll end up in jobs with nothing to do. If we're unlucky, we'll still have the nothing to do part, just nothing with which to pay the bills either.

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