Well, if this video [0] is anything to go by, most of the other jobs will be automated as well. And although I have no foresight to know how it will pan out, it looks like advances in technology (which have produced previously unimagined jobs for humans - hello, Android dev), advances in technology in this new age will only create new jobs for automatons, not for humans.
Except there won't be jobs in this future. None. There will come a day when medical doctors, lawyers, and even computer programming can be done by AI, and automation. You can't retrain a workforce for a job that doesn't exist. Robot maintenance maybe? Not when robots repair robots/themselves.. Sounds sci-fi now, but it's looming.
We already have the technology to fully automate many processes carried out by humans.
Actually the technology has existed for several decades now, still those jobs are not only not being replaced by machines, but new ones are being created for humans.
One of the reasons are unions, which are pretty strong in many wealthy and powerful nations like the US, UK, Germany and Japan.
I work in manufacturing automation and we have customers that could technically run their entire operations without one single human stepping on plant floor, however their unionized labor makes that feat, at least for now, impossible.
It's also pretty naive to believe new ways of earning income won't appear in the future and that all traditional careers will be entirely replaced.
We have 65" 4K TVs at home and we still go to the theaters and we can walk the streets of Venice from our computer screens and still spend a small fortune to travel.
Society will be disrupted just like it was with printing, the industrial revolution, communications, transportation and information.
In each of these disruptions we were doomed to dissappear.
When I was a kid my dad brought home a 100 year celebratory edition of the local newspaper.
It was published as a book were you could read pretty much every single cover and editorial of the last century.
There was one article about the car, described by the author as a bizarre evil invention, horrendous steel machines traveling at ridiculous speeds of up to 15 mph, threatening the lives of both pedestrians and horses alike.
People are under the likely false assumption that they won't be replaced by AI, because their jobs require too much intelligence or creativity. At one time, rug weavers believed the same thing, and now it seems to be programmers, designers and artists.
But I think you're right - as a general trend, any job that can be automated, will be automated, as long as consumers find the product acceptable. Of course, you can't automate everything because someone, somewhere, needs money to spend on the goods and services, but with a global consumer base and efficient automation, companies can probably still make a profit in the midst of mass unemployment.
Most (e.g. [1]) don't think of their job as being automated because most don't understand how it will happen. The issue is we only have the present way to think about how the future will work. The future will likely eliminate a lot of mundane engineering jobs (e.g. CRUD apps) with tools that provide automation (learned or programmed) and more intuitive interfaces for the layman. Not all work can be automated, but those are the edge cases. The focus is to eliminate most work, by building smarter and more niche services.
For example, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, et al have reduced the number of jobs for CMS and ecommerce developers. Zapier and IFTTT have reduced the number of integration jobs. The Grid was an experiment in creating whole websites automatically (most regard it as a failure, but the tech will likely catch up). There's research into using ML to identify and correct bugs in code. These are the low hanging fruit that will erode away at the jobs easiest to automate, leaving behind more niche work.
It's hard to imagine less work for engineers in the future because there's so much work to go around right now. That's likely the case presently because there's so many industries where manual labor can be eliminated, creating lots of new labor for engineers. Whole industries may be disrupted until corporations with automation emerge and take over. We'll likely see engineering work keep rising until there isn't as much left to automate and engineering supply catches up, at which point we'll hit "peak software engineering."
There will be engineers in the future just like there will be medical professionals in the future, but they'll probably be doing a different job and there will be a lot less work to go around. I like to think of that line of work as "escalation jobs," where when the machine fails, it goes to the human. Other work will likely get more and more scientific, theoretical and research-oriented.
I’ll take the opposite side of that prediction - driving, cooking, and cleaning will be part of the jobs that people compete to get, as the data entry and middle management jobs get wiped out.
I don’t think anything that involves physical variations (I.e. manual labor in differing environments) will be automated for a long time.
Once you've got rid of "cleaning" as an entire class of job, using new non-stick surfaces, roombas with steam cleaning attachments and so on, you don't just invent a new thing that needs manual cleaning, a good-enough universal cleaner will clean anything a person can.
Same with self-driving vehicles - once you solve that class of problems, nothing needs hand delivering again.
Same with automating any kind of fast food, manufacturing, warehouse loading and moving.
What are you going to invent in this future which needs to employ millions of people but doesn't involve then making or moving anything, typing or calculating, translating or pattern recognising?
I think this reveals a much more interesting trend that's likely to continue.
It's not that existing jobs will always be automated, we'll come up with tools that completely automate several layers of work.
It's a different view than all current jobs will be automated. Automation can be used to remove several verticals and improve efficiency by magnitudes in the process.
The jobs you listed have largely been augmented rather than replaced. You’re also not accounting for new jobs we can’t even imagine yet.
Ten years ago no one would think YouTuber or Instragram model would be viable jobs for some people. Social media directors at companies large and small have to find unique ways to engage with other humans. The guy that fixes cracked screens on smartphones couldn’t have done that in 1999. UX developer/designers craft human interactions to be better.
Automation taken to the end game may create a Star Trek like world where material goods are so cheap as to almost be free. The economy could shift to value knowledge, art, creativity, novel experiences and more.
Technology has a way creating new jobs when it takes old ones away. I'm not wise enough to know that those new jobs will be, perhaps we're all destined to become "prompt engineers" or similar. Who knows?
I've worked hard to be where I am too, but if you, like me, were able to land a software engineer job, you'll be able to pick up whatever new skill will be needed in the future without much trouble! I have no doubt you'll manage, so I don't worry about it!
If AI leads to ALL jobs being automated well guess what, we're ready for Luxury Gay Space-Communism as described in Iain M Banks' The Culture. My personal favourite sci-fi utopia!
I wouldn't hold my breath for that though, seems about as likely as running in to Jesus Christ in the supermarket. And I say that as an atheist.
Yes, automation will replace people in a lot of jobs. That worries me, as an individual subject to that disruption, and as a citizen/steward of my country.
But I've also been wondering if there might be a new kind of job coming, "person who does a new thing until it can be understood well enough to be 'autoficialized'."
Artificial intelligence may be great at running complex but well bounded problems, but intelligence of the wet kind probably won't be surpassed at recognizing and dealing with "exceptions" real-time for some time to come.
Also, AI will fail at being subversive, which is sometimes necessary. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that ..."
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
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