Ask HN: Which skills are least likely to be replaced by AI?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39667608

by AznHisoka • 2 years ago

30 110 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What kind of skills do you think will be the least likely to be replaced by AI? I'm not just talking about technical skills, but non-technical ones as well.

Such as creativity, emotional intelligence, leadership/people management, negotiation skills, motor/hand eye coordination, critical thinking skills...

miravmehta• 2 years ago

Basic communication with human interaction. Soft kills >> hard kills

AI is assistance not an replacement to a lot extent

Jensson5• 2 years ago

Soft kills >> hard kills

You mean stuff like poison? I think robots can do that, probably more effective than guns it could take over a food processing plant and change the recipe, just that guns is scarier.

smokel4• 2 years ago

I think they meant soft skills and hard skills.

Qem• 2 years ago

Probably those that require a combination of some high level cognitive processes, tacit knowledge, and physical actuation in uncontrolled environments. For example, plumbers probably aren't going to be replaced any soon. Surgeons too. But between surgeons and plumbers, the latter will take more time to be replaced, because a construction site is less of a controlled environment than a surgery room.

ilaksh2• 2 years ago

You didn't give a time frame. So I would say, there are no skills that cannot be replaced by AI in an indefinite time frame.

AI might have mastered just about every skill or capability within 10 or 20 years. Some people suspect less.

Your list isn't really just skills but more generally abilities.

Emotional IQ - See the Inflection 2.5 model (Pi).

Creativity - Ask ChatGPT to help you be creative writing poetry and then creating paintings of the poems.

Leadership/management - Claude 3 or GPT4 might be better than the average manager. 70% of my bosses have been barely competent pr!cks though, so I may be biased.

Negotiation is not that complex actually. It's boils down to being willing to walk away. Leading LLMs can be good negotiators already.

Hand-eye coordination - not for every single task, but we have robots that can play ping pong, juggle, catch balls, and solve a Rubik's cube faster than humanely possible.

Critical thinking skills: put the average person off the street against Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4 Turbo and have them take a GRE or similar test. I would bet on the AI.

For your list, we are already there.

I think that "replaced" is not necessarily the best way to think about it though. People still play chess. Or run. Or Jeopardy. We still have plenty of amateur artists that just want to imitate their favorite cartoon or whatever. Even though AI can do all of that better and faster now.

But wait 10 or 20 years. There will be very realistic and fully capable simulations of humans.

barbazoo• 2 years ago

But wait 10 or 20 years. There will be very realistic and fully capable simulations of humans.

So sometime between FSD and fusion as an energy source.

sgtpepper1235• 2 years ago

Perfect

schwartzworld• 2 years ago

This is comment is the problem with AI. You listed a bunch of things as proof that AI can replace human skills but many are wrong or at least require moving the goal post. Poetry and lyrics from AI are usually lame and formulaic.

A robot solving a Rubik's cube is less impressive than a human doing so, since Rubik's cube is basically about memorizing the algorithm.

Chatgpt might be better than your manager, but managers don't lead. Every manager I've reported to has basically had the job of primarily relaying communication from above.

andy993• 2 years ago

Investigative skills. AI can't do anything a detective does. Formulating a theory, testing it, refining it etc.

Also quickly grabbing arbitrarily shaped objects from a pile.

sweetheart• 2 years ago

I'm not disagreeing, but this answer is ironic considering how Ilya Sutskever once used detective work as a way to describe the relationship between LLMs and "understanding":

"So, I’d like to take a small detour and to give an analogy that will hopefully clarify why more accurate prediction of the next word leads to more understanding, real understanding. Let’s consider an example. Say you read a detective novel. It’s like complicated plot, a storyline, different characters, lots of events, mysteries like clues, it’s unclear. Then, let’s say that at the last page of the book, the detective has gathered all the clues, gathered all the people and saying, “okay, I’m going to reveal the identity of whoever committed the crime and that person’s name is”. Predict that word. Predict that word, exactly. My goodness. Right? Yeah, right. Now, there are many different words. But predicting those words better and better and better, the understanding of the text keeps on increasing. GPT-4 predicts the next word better."

andy993• 2 years ago

He's talking about the model as a "decider" which it's good at, not a detective or investigator.

recursive• 2 years ago

Your recipe for investigative skills also sounds a lot like science. Even today, the various chat bots can formulate theories and test protocols. I don't see anything that puts any of that out of reach.

ben_w8• 2 years ago

I'm sure I've seen articles about AI doing the former and videos demonstrating robots doing the latter.

keiferski5• 2 years ago

Anything that involves in-person charisma will not be replaced for centuries, if ever.

Ditto for any kind of writing or communication skills that are counter-cultural in nature. It seems pretty clear that the AIs corporations are creating are pretty aligned with whatever values the powers-that-be have. I don't expect AI to invent the equivalent of punk rock.

giantg22• 2 years ago

Who needs charisma if you're a robot overlord? Motivation could be achieved by other means, and if AI is really that smart, they will see that.

keiferski5• 2 years ago

Robot overlords aren't going to take over the world anytime soon. Real life isn't a sci-fi novel.

Jensson5• 2 years ago

Predictability and objectivity of a robot >>> charisma for most jobs. People prefer not to deal with people, to do stuff via web forms instead of phone calls etc.

In person charisma is also easily done via robots by just giving them an animated avatar, that robot will outperform 99% of humans easily since humans have a hard time faking emotions while a robot doesn't, they can fake being excited or sad or understanding every time and always be there for you unlike real humans. The only reason that is hard for humans isn't that it is hard to do the action, but that it is hard to control our emotions.

keiferski5• 2 years ago

I’m sorry, but if you think that an in-person robot with an animated face is more charismatic than a human being, we must live in different universes.

leashless2• 2 years ago

English isn't an ideal language to describe what kinds of "charisma" an AI could have, but I don't think it's at all foolish or improbable to say than an AI system could have profound and indeed superhuman charisma.

Worshipping gods is an old human sport, and it wouldn't need *much* encouragement for humans to see an AI system as a sort of "village god" –– the kinds of entities which were worshipped all over the world before One Big God religions became common. A "Tesla Kami" which talks from your Tesla, and also talks for The Teslas, and also talks for Tesla, Inc. for example could be highly charismatic and not even slightly humanoid in appearance.

If you think I'm joking, consider the Knight Rider TV series with a talking car. Cars can have charisma even if they don't talk, but add a voice-and-mind and we're off to the races, so to speak.

Charisma is a funny thing.

sans_souse• 2 years ago

Art. By definition, and applied broadly across fields. And I mean real art, not generic, cookie cutter, mass-production "art" (that can be replaced, and makes up the majority)

ardaoweo5• 2 years ago

Some forms of art will be more protected than others. Think of somebody who builds unique artwork by hand 100% from random wood and other material found in the nature. Good luck having AI robots pick those from the wilderness, put them together, or 3D print a fake one that looks exactly like a real thing.

red-iron-pine6• 2 years ago

what is "real art"? what you're at it, define what a True Scotsman is for me.

for every artist getting a residency at MoMA there are dozens more doing logos, UI, concept design, etc., and those people are getting slammed right now.

but yeah, the one-off person getting a grant from somewhere to do art might be able to hit median US income -- AI-proof!

softwaredoug• 2 years ago

I hope we can find a path to a post-scarity, Star Trek world, where people can pursue passions without worrying about marketability and whether "AI" whatever will replace you.

I can get great furniture at Ikea, but some people build furniture because they love it.

latexr• 2 years ago

I hope we can find a path to a post-scarity, Star Trek world, where people can pursue passions without worrying about marketability and whether "AI" whatever will replace you.

*Shakes AI Magic 8 Ball* “Outlook not so good”.

The people with money are more concerned with dreaming about bunkers managed robots than solving any real actionable problems.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60165391

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwJQEAI_KE0

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

buzzert2• 2 years ago

So, you're saying we're hopeless without the help of billionaires?

bonton89• 2 years ago

Even Star Trek had a World War 3 that destroyed most of the human population before rationality finally prevailed.

neonnoodle• 2 years ago

High manual dexterity in cramped, wet, poorly-lit environments.

hnthrowaway0328• 2 years ago

Anything protected by a union or government.

Anything that is physical and not 100% replicable.

Anything that is interpersonal relationship.

GoldenMonkey2• 2 years ago

Seems like interpersonal relationship can be ai... in japan there are ai dating bots.

downboots• 2 years ago

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm1012434/mediaviewer/rm3616608768/

skwee3572• 2 years ago

Any physical type of jobs: house repairs such as painting, building, etc. Roof cleaning, moving furniture. Physical therapists like massage/needles/etc. Physical teaching like 1:1 practices of martial arts/dances/etc.

dagw• 2 years ago

Physical teaching like 1:1 practices of martial arts/dances/etc.

There are whole host of companies offering various apps where you film yourself doing a sport or activity and an AI will give you advice on what you are doing wrong and how to improve. They might not be great now, but in a few years they will probably be as good as most average coaches/trainers.

skwee3572• 2 years ago

Yeah, well. I train in boxing 1:1. No app in existence can replace a physical coach for when we do training on the pads, let alone sparring.

I bet, in some distant future, a robot might replace my coach. But it's very likely that by then I'll turn into a power cell for a huge electrical grid for robot survival.

GoldenMonkey2• 2 years ago

physical engineering. That will take a while.

roydivision• 2 years ago

Tech CEOs

emestifs• 2 years ago

OP was asking about least likely

throwaway290• 2 years ago

ensuring and enforcing ethical applications of ML

standup comedy

xutopia• 2 years ago

My plumber seems pretty safe about AI at least for next century. Unless houses are rebuilt with standards and ease of repairability in mind. But even changing all the houses in the world to this new system would take over a hundred years.

tyingq2• 2 years ago

Prepping a young person to be on a path to eventually owning their own plumbing, HVAC, roofing, etc, business does seem a pretty solid plan.

Though I suppose AI could be part of something that squashes small businesses and funnels work to huge companies. Which would make that entrepreneur angle a bit harder.

There's already a fair amount of SEO gaming to make something that isn't "local" appear to be local.

Turing_Machine5• 2 years ago

I'd expect roofing to be less immune. No offense to any roofers out there, but roofing is a lot more formulaic than plumbing or HVAC.

I don't think it would be hard at all to design a robot to roof the large flat areas typical of modern architecture (if it can be dignified by that name), maybe with a human or two to make sure the robot keeps working, and to handle any peaks, valleys, plumbing or heating penetrations, or other weird areas.

ben_w8• 2 years ago

I'm old enough to remember people saying that about go.

I pitched the idea of an AI directly generating art sometime around 2008, only to have the idea curtly dismissed.

Deep Fakes (by a different name) were a plot point in an episode of Sliders, and the audio version a throwaway line in an episode of Babylon 5, at the time I thought each were completely impossible.

My bet would be androids doing plumbing around ten years after cars lose their steering wheels; but even then, that's just anchoring on Moore and the available power envelope for a car vs. a bipedal robot.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

Yes, eventually robots will be able to do plumbing.

But if/when robots are doing a majority of plumbing jobs, they'll be doing 99%+ of all jobs. So society will have changed drastically and unknowingly, for better or worse. And that societal change will affect all jobs, robot-replaced or not.

So IMO a relatively robot resistant job (like plumber) is as good as a robot proof jobs.

fuzzythinker• 2 years ago

If you've ever tried to squeeze yourself under the kitchen sink, work one hand behind the 5" gap around the garbage disposal, work the other hand around the tiny gap between the garbage disposal and the main sink, try to coordinate the 2 hands to tighten the faucet, then I'm sure you'll agree with OP.

We don't even have a commercial robot to unload and store dishes from the dishwasher nor unload and store clothes from dryer. What makes you think robotics will be solved in a century, let alone ten years?

unraveller• 2 years ago

Why would I pay someone to fix miles of hidden plumbing when I can just place a bedpan on top of the robot vacuum cleaner as he goes past who then hands it off to the septic tank bot. If simple object from A to B manipulation is free & fast then we are going back to medieval times with robot serfs. The pipes will be a vestige remnant like landlines are.

ardaoweo5• 2 years ago

Motor/hand eye coordination most definitely. That's what millions of years evolution has optimized us for more than anything else. Anything involving manipulating and movement in varying physical environments remains a hard problem to solve in cost-effective manner, despite all the money poured to self-driving cars and general purpose robotics. Of course we have solutions that work in specific contexts, factory or lab environment, but that's about it.

I believe emotional intelligence will become a close second. As long as we don't have perfected humanoid robots like in TV series Westworld, people will likely prefer genuine human contact in certain situations (psychologist, therapist, service sector, nursing...)

Havoc• 2 years ago

Tour guide, nurses, physio, child care, psychologist.

Anything in front of a screen is vulnerable

The only profession where I’m 100% confident it’ll survive is the oldest profession

stefs• 2 years ago

mobile phones with tour guide apps: knows where you are and what you're looking at and can tell you everything about it.

psychologist was one of the first ever applications of AI - remember eliza.

but child care, nurses and physio are, imo, safe.

ardaoweo5• 2 years ago

I predict that rich people will continue to pay for a real psychologist to get genuine human contact. Meanwhile, the big masses of poorer people will eventually get to enjoy LLM-powered AI ones, which may be an improvement or a downgrade depending on the current state in their area. My country's state funded healthcare system is already utilizing web-based therapy, LLM's will just replace the human writing responses.

mistrial9• 2 years ago

war ?

NateEag• 2 years ago

Prostitution:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_profession_(phrase)

ardaoweo5• 2 years ago

Yes, I think nursing is perfect purely from a "not being replaced" perspective. An absolutely massive demand from aging population with lots of money, requires physical movement, eye-motor skills between and inside varying environments, like moving between old people's houses and then taking care of the people inside. On top of all that, a real human nurse could (ideally, when not worked to death) give genuine human emotional understanding.

yabbs• 2 years ago

Creative prosthetics and a VR headset and I'm less confident

red-iron-pine6• 2 years ago

lots of studies have shown that screen time for kids ain't so great. i wouldn't send my kids to a daycare that was one person + 20 youtube streams + bots

tkgally• 2 years ago

nurses

Yes. I spent a few days in the hospital last October for some jaw surgery. When I was flat on my back recovering from the total anesthesia and unable to move, I observed what the nurses were doing and thought about how much of it could be replaced by AI. Essentially none, unless humanoid robots get really, really good. They might eventually, but that seems now to be a long way off.

ycuser2• 2 years ago

Being myself.

anileated2• 2 years ago

Art is never going to be replaced by ML-generated works, because art is self-expression and so requires there to be a self to express.

Joeboy• 2 years ago

If you're a starving artist, AI poses absolutely no threat to your position.

smokel4• 2 years ago

That may be the case for some art, but self-expression is not something I strive for in my own art. Just to list one example.

ben_w8• 2 years ago

Self expression is relevant to what I do in private, but not only am I happy to act as a stereotypically annoying client (you know the type) to an infinitely patient AI in order to find expression for what I want, in addition to that, the art I make by my own hand (even including non-AI programs like Blender) has negligible market value.

anileated2• 2 years ago

It is that already by default, without even trying. The beauty of how the mind works.

lordnacho• 2 years ago

Responsibility. As separate from technical ability.

You won't be able to replace doctors, because you want someone to say "I'm a doctor and you need this surgery". What will happen is the doctor will get an AI to help him, and then he will rubber stamp the diagnosis. He captures the gains.

Pilots and captains are also one of these. Someone's gotta be responsible for the people on board, even if a computer is already doing everything on a normal day.

Turing_Machine5• 2 years ago

Someone's gotta be responsible for the people on board, even if a computer is already doing everything on a normal day.

Military planes have been way beyond unassisted human control for a long time now. I see no reason why airliners won't go down the same road (you can literally see it happening as we speak).

It turns out that dynamic instability has some real advantages (e.g., maneuverability), if you have a computer to help keep the thing from going out of control.

9659• 2 years ago

The military is reluctant to take the decision to kill someone out of human control.

The AI may fly the plane, but the trigger is squeezed by a human.

anilr• 2 years ago

I'll disagree with this take too. In cases where AI is comparable or only slightly better I'd agree many would prefer a human doing this task.

However when AI does a job better people will be fine with AI taking on the role. We are fine with computer controlled subway lines, dishwashers, and some even driverless cars. We are happy let machines do tasks if we're confident they will do them well.

ben_w8• 2 years ago

Right now, AI need a huge number of examples to reach decent performance. Therefore, things where a huge number of training examples don't exist and can't be generated by a simulation or self-play. When AI get past that problem, I expect the whole global economy to shift in a couple of months[0].

Also, things where the point is to be human. Working for rich people in any capacity may fill this role, for the same reason they by watches which cost more than apartments yet keep worse time than a Casio F91W.

[0] I'm also assuming this is more likely to happen after we get a significant number of android robot workers; if it happens before that point, then it may take a year or two for the global economy to shift.

leashless2• 2 years ago

Came here to say this. And to add: we don't know to what degree human behaviour is regular.

It could be that in practice an AI can't really generalise well to All People compared to humans, because the humans are so diverse and the humans who are doing some jobs generalise to just the small set of people they are working with.

Right now it does look like prompts like "answer this as if you're one of Napoleon's generals" work fairly well, but I wonder if in practice we'll find out that specific human experiences which are hard to document will turn out to create niches which AI is very very poor at dealing with.

Potential examples:

* what does it feel like to fall in love? humans can't describe well.

* what does it feel like to summit Everest for the first time? ditto.

* what are spiritual experiences like?

Probably many other areas which are clearly important to people, particularly falling in love, but language is weak, and at the end of the day...

It's a large language model.

Buttons8402• 2 years ago

Lawyers.

I think AI can possibly replace lawyers, but the powerful people in society will do all they can to prevent it.

glial• 2 years ago

AI should replace lawyers, since they are essentially a regressive tax on engaging with the legal system.

Buttons8402• 2 years ago

I agree. If access to the legal system becomes easy enough it will stress the system and get some parts of it fixed. Which is one reason I think lots of artificial barriers will prevent this from happening.

dmazzoni• 2 years ago

I do agree lawyers will always be needed.

But, don't you think AI is already making lawyers dramatically more efficient? So much of what lawyers do is reading - reading possibly relevant case law, reading corporate communication.

I met someone recently who has a law degree from a small no-name law school. He got mediocre grades. His job is sit in a room with 10 other lawyers, reading through every single document in a giant room full of filing cabinets. It's part of a corporate merger. It's going to take years to go through but they need lawyers to read through every single page looking for certain potential issues.

That's the sort of thing I feel like will be eliminated.

red-iron-pine6• 2 years ago

there will be a lawyer since they're licensed by the state bar, and to file certain things or do certain actions you need someone who can check the box, similar to formally certified medical or engineering workers.

but a lot of law is review, of contracts, of statues, etc. and legal discovery companies are already a thing and were snagging a lot of marketshare before GPT exploded.

"read each clause, identify weasel words, parties, and summarize each line or paragraph. then create a link to any relevant case law or statue for sanity checking" -- is already a thing. very little law actually happens via dramatic courtroom antics or powerful closing oration; most is summarizing things as mentioned above.

just like how excel didn't eliminate accountants, but now instead of 10 you need 3, this will cut the already tight legal market down further.

buzzert2• 2 years ago

Why would powerful people want to prevent lawyers from being replaced by AI? Wouldn't they rather not pay for expensive lawyers too? Or are you saying they somehow like paying for lawyers?

LeeroyWasHere• 2 years ago

Took them 15 years to replace cashiers with a touch screens in McDonald's.

"AI" still can't drive a car.

Turing_Machine5• 2 years ago

Prostitution.

Pornography is doomed, but we're a long way from realistic physical sex robots, AI powered or otherwise.

chrischen• 2 years ago

AI replacing skills is a moving target. Anything can be replaced by AI (more so information jobs) but as things are replaced humans just have to work harder to be novel. AI is by definition trained on the largest pool of examples, which means being novel will mean your skills are excluded by AI until it catches on. Of course being novel is something that perpetually happens. Ideally the world becomes a place where the AI and robots do the rote busy work and humans are relegated to finding novel solutions.

Even before AI there was the issue of being replaced by cheaper labor. AI just happens to be computational cheap labor. Just be better at what you do to avoid being replaced.

ctoth2• 2 years ago

Just be better at what you do to avoid being replaced.

Git gud! Great advice!

dcchambers• 2 years ago

Plumbers, locksmiths, carpenters, HVAC technicians, etc. Trade jobs that require very precise hand-eye coordination and the ability to perform in a wide variety of unpredictable environments.

Nurses/MAs for the same reason, but also the fact that I think people in pain/sickness will still want human compassion. Even if AI and Robots may be able to do the job some day, people want to be helped by other people.

ctoth2• 2 years ago

The thing about AI is, the whole point is to replicate and eventually surpass what a human can do, so the eventual answer is nothing. What timescale are you working with? Are you trying to figure out your own career (good luck!) are you trying to advise a kid/student (maybe plumber, maybe?) but all of these are sort of just kicking the can.

Probably one of the most important jobs now is figuring out what the hell the upcoming jobs/activities should auta be.

Timber-6539• 2 years ago

AI is a convenient scapegoat for putting people out of work and paying employees less than they deserve.

No industry is safe from this malpractice as long as above is true.

ergonaught• 2 years ago

Barring global catastrophe resetting humanity's scientific and technological advancement, everything that can be automated will be automated. That's everything outside what could only be a niche market of "Certified Human-Produced".

Countering that, in a way, barring major sociocultural shifts, the elite require serfs, so whatever it is that serfs can be made to do which is somehow necessary for perpetuating the power/financial structures which prop up the elites will be "spared" somehow.

Your question seems to assume that there are some kind of practical human capabilities that cannot be automated. This is false.

smokel4• 2 years ago

As it stands, only things that are economically feasible to automate will be automated.

A side effect of this is that labor wages have increased dramatically, thereby decreasing the possibilities of having unique stuff done.

The unfolding of reality is not one linear equation.

smokel4• 2 years ago

It might be interesting to repeat the questions asked in the context of "bullshit jobs" and "leisure sciences" which were raised in the 1990s.

People then assumed that through automation (not even intelligent automation) we would work less and do more interesting things. Boy were they wrong, and I wholeheartedly assume that we'll be wrong again about the next 20 years.

ardaoweo5• 2 years ago

Yep, if automation really accelerates there are two ways to prevent the collapse of the economic system as we know it now. Either invent lots bullshit jobs, or create universal basic income and pay people for doing nothing, or something unprofitable.

red-iron-pine6• 2 years ago

the short story Maana talks about this. we go into it expecting more leisure time, but instead get automated slave drivers and get punted out of jobs.

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

pwillia7• 2 years ago

Human sacrifice. It's clear the most impactful things I do are when I travel and visit partners/customers and from a material standpoint those are some of the least impactful.

I've come to believe the sacrifice is the thing -- that's why getting on a plane beats the best video conference and always will. The same thing will be true with AI.

Genuine communication will only become more important and those who can communicate well and not sound like LLM drivel (even if it gets really good) will stand out.

killthebuddha• 2 years ago

Spoiler: this comment does not technically answer OP's question.

Many of the answers in this thread talk about skills where AI seems unlikely to have any direct sort of impact at all (like plumbing). In my opinion, that could easily end up being technically correct but exactly wrong in spirit (assuming the ultimate goal is to have a good job). It's somewhat likely that AI-augmented or AI-enabled professions become so ludicrously profitable that any other profession becomes barely livable.

Instead of trying to avoid AI it might make more sense to ride the wave. Dive right into some industry that's undergoing upheaval, work for AI-powered startups, learn about the technology, and meet the future head-on.

I don't want to sound too "gung ho", I'm a software engineer who feels like my profession will be radically different in less than 10 years and I'm genuinely worried about staying relevant. But I think "staying relevant" is probably a better strategy than trying to get out of way.

Turing_Machine5• 2 years ago

It's somewhat likely that AI-augmented or AI-enabled professions become so ludicrously profitable that any other profession becomes barely livable.

It doesn't matter how much money you make. When your sewer backs up, someone has to fix it, and that person is gonna charge what the market will bear. If the professions become ludicrously profitable, the trades are going to increase their rates accordingly.

red-iron-pine6• 2 years ago

the electricians around Ashburn, VA who service data centers get paid more than most of my network engineers. their boss got paid more than I did as a manager, if I believe the scuttlebutt they told us.

hard work, on site -- i'm sitting pretty at home typing this -- and no real upwards growth, but there's big money in NoVA data centers and the tradesmen's pay reflects that.

ben_w8• 2 years ago

Lots of people think 13 is an unlucky number, so don't pick it on lotteries. But enough people know this fact to outnumber the superstitious, so it's actually one of the most chosen numbers. (Source: vague memory, as web searches give me "most drawn numbers" rather than "most popular numbers").

It's widely known that robots have bad vision and hand eye coordination, thus a common recommendation is to learn trade skills such as plumbing. I suspect that means there will be an over-supply of plumbers.

Everyone needs food, too — much more critical to fix when it goes wrong than is sewage — but farming doesn't make you rich.

emrah• 2 years ago

Industrialization replaced almost all physical labor in factories. Sure there are still some left but those are the ones cheaper to fill/program a human than a robot.

AI will do the same, if allowed, eventually, to mental jobs

shrimp_emoji• 2 years ago

By Moravec's paradox, the ones we find the simplest.

So driving for Uber and mowing lawns.

jamesponddotco• 2 years ago

Sysadmins, as we're the plumbers of the tech world. Someone gotta keep those servers running, right?

Or maybe I just think that because I still consider myself one. Who knows.

jacknews• 2 years ago

I'm fairly sure the oldest of professions will be relatively immune to AI.

But also teaching. AI might be better at teaching actual subjects, physics, maths, and so on, but a good part of school is socialization beyond the family, and that pretty much requires human teachers/coaches/guides/role-models.

muneface• 2 years ago

Making babies.

Ask HN: Which skills are least likely to be replaced by AI?

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