This is a special post for quick takes by Daniel Bednarski. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
As a homeschooling father, I like to muse about the kinds of career relatively immune to AI disruption within the next two decades.
Just listing a few off the top of my head:
- Sensei
- Mechanic
- Firefighter
- Mother
- Park ranger
- Medic
- Priest
- Cop
- Babysitter
When I look at what protects these jobs in particular, three patterns emerge for me:
- Legally shielded
- Physically complex
- Intrinsically human
In the first group, we have professions which could be dirt cheap if they weren't insulated from competition by eg state bars, limited slots, and other forms of protectionism that help the few who make it in at the expense of the public welfare. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, and even engineers under some regulatory frameworks count towards this category.
Second we have essentially the "learn a trade" meme. A carpenter uses fine motor skills in tandem with complex technical knowledge, and AI can only replace the latter until robotics become sufficiently advanced. Some of these trades, like various kinds of car mechanic, are quite precarious and could be replaced with current technology once capital is allocated towards doing so. Others, like park rangers, could be greatly amplified by technologies like AI drone swarms, but are from off from being completely replaced.
Finally, the "intrinsically human" jobs are safest but generally low paying even in the pre-AI economy. For example, even in a market flooded with high quality, cheap sex robots, some people will prefer an actual biological human whore. (At least some) parents will want to socialize their kids with human caretakers. Heck, we've had the technology to obsolesce human preachers for over a century, but we keep them there because we like the format. In a similar vein, I expect monasteries with human monks to chug along just fine into the next few centuries.
And by the way, just as a semi-unrelated tangent, I detest the doomerism asserting that most humans won't have a place in the economy of (let's say) 2040. The amount of unfulfilled labor need is incalculably massive. Let's just take schools, for example. I think the ideal classroom size is three teachers per student. Almost every person should have a physical trainer. High speed rail should connect every city in the world and cross oceans seamlessly. Law enforcement should have squads of elite mental healthcare units to assist in crises. We don't have the manpower to accomplish a fraction of a percent of the demand for labor.
The era of human labor hasn't even begun yet by my reckoning.
Anyway, back on track: how do I use this knowledge to my advantage as a parent preparing my children for economic life in a future who's shape I can only roughly guess? Well, one advantage is that most parents are still shaping their children's education to win in the economy of 2015. Teaching the anti-racist baby to code and write essays with a Topic Sentence followed by a Concrete Detail, some Commentary, all wrapped up in a cozy Concluding Sentence. Jane Schaffer reigned over a generation for whom the ability to write a crisp email all but guaranteed a middle class career.
So that's what I don't do. Instead I try to focus on resourcefulness, charisma, and intuitive rationality. The point of learning math and science is to build reliable intuitions about the world and protect yourself from wooful thinking. MMA training gives them a respectable base for physical activity in general. Reading is harder to justify — I simply can't imagine how this ancient glyph language matters in a world where everyone's passing eachother audios on WhatsApp. Conversation seems much more useful as a life skill, yet we spend much more resources drilling kids on written literature as if we were raising a generation of Sumerian priests. Oh well.
I'd love for you (not the audience in general, but you personally, the one reading this) to rip this to shreds btw. This is something very personally important so criticism or advice can directly help me improve the lives of my family.
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