A shift in parenting is now required: previously, our parents would often ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” However, in the AI era, the question should perhaps change to, “What problems do you want to solve when you grow up?” This is because the professions we once aspired to may not exist in the future, but the problems are likely to persist and remain unsolved.
For example, one of the most famous stories is about Einstein, who posed a question at the age of 15: If a person could run as fast as light, what would they observe? This question went unanswered for a decade until Einstein himself solved it, leading to the invention of the theory of relativity.
Similarly, our children today, if they think of some bizarre questions during their learning process—questions that no one can solve—may one day use AI tools to solve them themselves, potentially becoming great scientists. For instance, can we use AI to improve issues related to new energy vehicles, autonomous driving, or battery technology? Can we tackle medical issues like cancer with AI? If we teach children to use AI tools to solve these problems, even if they solve just one, they will be remarkable. Recently, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to AI, recognizing scientists who use software to solve problems.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to David Baker from the University of Washington, Demis Hassabis from DeepMind, and John Jumper for their work in “deciphering the protein folding code using artificial intelligence (AI).” Meanwhile, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their foundational discoveries and inventions in using artificial neural networks for machine learning, which form the basis of mainstream AI technologies today, including machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision.
In the future, those who utilize AI tools to solve real-world problems will achieve the highest honors.
AI and robotics instill fear in many, as it seems that AI will take away our jobs. However, humans are incredibly valuable. The number of jobs eliminated will not be significant. Our primary responsibility when employed by a company is to assume trust and responsibility. When you are hired, you have two main functions: to perform work and to be accountable for the results. AI does not bear any responsibility; AI programs and robots cannot be held accountable. If I assign a task to AI and it fails, I must take responsibility. If AI does not perform well, I must step in to rectify the situation, while AI will simply say, “I will keep working until you are satisfied.” AI itself has no sense of responsibility and cannot be fully trusted. Therefore, you are selling responsibility; you are selling trust to your employer, which AI cannot provide. Thus, in the future, wealthy individuals will likely use AI or robots less; the more money one has, the less they will interact directly with AI. You will hire human assistants to manage artificial intelligence. Therefore, if you can afford it, you will only deal with humans. However, as humans become more expensive, they will charge more because they are capable of bearing responsibility and are trustworthy, unlike machines.
You might say that the rich will not be affected by AI, while the middle class will manage AI. But what about the lower-class blue-collar workers? Many blue-collar jobs are among the most challenging, and AI and robots struggle to perform them. Perhaps it will take 50 or 100 years before robots can replace the intricate manual tasks of humans, such as fixing the plumbing under your sink. These jobs require dexterity, strength, and human hand intelligence, and their complexity is indeed incredible. A robot may be able to perform part of the work, but no robot can do it all. Therefore, blue-collar jobs like electricians, barbers, and chefs have a very bright future.
Some say that in China, there are over 40 million taxi drivers, bus drivers, and truck drivers. When autonomous vehicles emerge, their jobs are likely to be replaced. Additionally, there are about 6 million couriers in China. It is hard to imagine that there will be enough new jobs in the AI era for these individuals.
However, driving jobs will transition over time, and there will be a transition period. Trucks will drive themselves, but there will be a person inside who is not driving full-time but is using a computer to do other work. Just like today’s self-driving taxis, there will need to be people ready to handle emergencies and assign human drivers to vehicles in unexpected situations. Humans will only need to manage the tricky parts of driving. However, a lot of human support and drivers will still be needed, and it will take a long time to bridge that gap; it will likely be about ten years before we can do without hiring humans.
Thus, people have ten years to acquire new jobs. You might find this hard to imagine, but even in China’s history, you can look back 20 years when most citizens were farmers, and you would tell them that 20 years later, they would all be urban dwellers, with only 5% still farming. 95% would find new jobs. They would ask, “What can I do?” You would say, “Oh, you will become a real estate agent, or a driving instructor, or work in beauty and nail care.” There is nothing new under the sun; history repeats itself.
In the future, there will be a large number of repair jobs, just like today there are many auto mechanics. If there are so many robot-operated trucks and devices, they will all need repairs. This is a job that robots will not be able to do for a long time. Therefore, many truck drivers will become truck mechanics.
If someone asks what advice I would give to a young person in the face of the AI era, I would suggest working in a field that “does not even have a name.” If you need to spend 15 minutes explaining to your parents what you are doing, that is a good sign. It means you are ahead of the curve, and the language must catch up with you. AI must also catch up with you.
For a long time, parents have told us that being a doctor or a lawyer is a great job. But what can be considered a great job in the AI era?
In AI, exciting jobs will not be programming, as AI will do that itself. AI platforms are created by programming engineers, and AI excels at writing code. Jobs that AI will not do in the future may include “AI therapists.” This does not refer to human therapists, but to specialists who address AI’s appearance and mental health issues, experts who are very skilled at identifying problems in AI, such as why AI provides frustrating answers to people.
Another AI-related job will be that of an AI curriculum consultant. As the field of AI expands, they must be educated, which means they must go through courses, and new models need training. They must first train AI on the simplest tasks before introducing increasingly complex ones. There will be different expertise and methods to educate AI to achieve different types of intelligence. Therefore, there will be specialists who train AI in certain directions, such as those who want conservative AI, conservative answers, or AI that aligns with a certain social system. This will be an indispensable job in AI systems.
Careers that rely on creativity and complex decision-making—such as designers, artists, strategists, and writers—are also less likely to be affected by automation. These jobs require “high levels of judgment and creativity” and involve “custom skills” that are difficult for digital tools to replicate.
From the dependence of a job on repetitive, structured inputs and limited decision-making, we can discern which jobs are most susceptible to automation. Positions that do not require empathy, intuition, physical labor, or complex human judgment are at a higher risk of being replaced.
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