Automated or Not? Will Robots Take Your Job?

Tech & Tea is a podcast & newsletter about how technology impacts our lives and what we’re doing about it.

Table of Contents

• Welcome to Tech & Tea

  • Conversation Summary

    • 🤖 What's Getting Automated?

    • 👷‍♂️ What's Safe from the Robots?

    • Do you have a story you’d like to share?

Conversation Summary

If you listen to the news you’d think the world is crumbling and will be taken over by AI or we’re all being pushed into the matrix. Maybe not. Some jobs will be automated. Some will be augmented. Outsourcing and mechanical turking of “AI platforms” will continue to grow. But at the end of the day, we’re still going to need humans far and wide across the economy. What will it look like? Continue reading to find out.

🤖 What's Getting Automated?

First off, let's talk jobs. Some roles are ripe for automation—think repetitive tasks like data entry, routine customer service, and manual labor. Thanks to AI's lightning-fast processing power and ability to learn from data, these jobs are set to become a thing of the past faster than you can say "algorithm."

• We all know automation is coming for the simple ROTE jobs. Have you seen this automated burger business? What about automated pizza making? Or drive-through ice machines from twice the ice (man I wish I started this one!)? These simple machines will grow, for sure.

• Most people building AI didn’t see it eating their job first. Computers are great at math and logic. Isn’t it logical that they’d be great at finance, coding and many other white collar jobs? I jumped from dev to design mid-career because I knew the code was going to write the code some day. Too bad the tech and finance bros didn’t see it coming :/

• NYC restaurants experimenting with remote cashiers. Yep, that means you’re checking out with a person on Zoom. With minimum wage being pushed up across multiple states to nearly double what it was several years ago, you can be certain corporates will do everything to skirt those laws and keep profits high.

• Another weird one you probably weren’t watching is virtual models. Good by instagram influences and magazine models, corporate America prefers computer generated models that cost pennies on the dollar.

We can be certain that there’s going to be a lot of change in the market. We can also be fairly certain that it won’t be as predictable as we’d hope. Will it be the end of your career? Will we all be living off Universal Basic Income (UBI)? My gut says probably not.

👷‍♂️ What's Safe from the Robots?

But fear not! There are plenty of careers that AI won't be taking over anytime soon. Jobs that require creativity, emotional intelligence, and human intuition are firmly in the "safe" zone. Think artists, therapists, strategists, mechanics, and other jobs where empathy, critical thinking, and the ability to adapt on the fly are irreplaceable.

• The US Career Institute says there are at least 65 jobs you can be confident won’t be automated. Top of the list includes jobs that are creative, require emotional intelligence, and are not repetitive.

• The National Student Clearinghouse reported that vocational community college enrollment has grown 16% since 2018. Last year’s report shows that enrollment in construction, culinary, and mechanic trades increase the most.

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