5 jobs that will outlive the era of robots

Almost all human work requires a combination of the following four basic types of tasks: repetitive manual, non-repetitive manual, repetitive cognitive, and non-repetitive cognitive. There will come a time when any human work can be replaced by the work of a machine,so the question isn’t whether or not it can be done but when it will be done.

There are a number of jobs that will be exceptionally difficult for an AI robot to carry out, due to their subjectivity. Each of the following jobs requires a unique combination of human intuition, reasoning, empathy and emotion, so it will be difficult to train an AI system to do these things. Another common factor we will see in the following list is humanity.

Here are the 5 least likely jobs to be taken over by robots:

Preschool and Primary School Teacher

Unless we are trying to turn our children into small computers, the profession of a teacher should be one of the few professions to remain as we know it. As human beings, we need to clearly identify and establish a minimum age to integrating human-machines with children in order to satisfy the emotional aspects of a young persons education. If we want them to behave like humans, should they be educated by robots?


Professional athletes
U.S. inventor Raymond Kurzweil estimates that by 2045 computers will be 1 billion times more powerful than the brain capacity of all human beings put together. But let’s think outside the box for a minute, what if football teams were made up of robots? Would it be just as much fun for fans? What about robot Olympics? Clearly robots do not need to excel and compete for who is the fastest, who jumps the highest or whoever jumps the fastest. Sports would not make sense for robots as it does for human beings. The work of a professional athlete would be the last to fall into this future society of reigning technology, unless sport ceased to be a priority in our interests as a whole.


Politicians
Can you imagine the world of politics without human beings? With robots as politicians? As unlikely as this scenario seems we come to think about whether or not machines will need politics. We think that in the short term it is not a concept that we see as plausible. For the time being, human beings will be the only ones running the political scene and deciding the future of our society as we know it. That is why- fortunately or unfortunately- politicians will be among the last professionals to lose their jobs because of robots.  

Judges
This is a job that requires objective and subjective evaluations on a case by case basis, which is something that doesn’t come easily to artificial intelligence. In order for a judge to make subjective judgements, he is not only required to have a vast amount of knowledge of the law but a judge must also understand and be able to evaluate the ramifications of his/her decision in order to make a fair and just trial. The function of a judge can be extended to all sorts of different roles, e.g a judge of a pie eating contest.


Mental Health Professional
We circle back to the subjectivity of an individual. Mental health experts such as psychologists or psychiatrists will be the last profession in which robots will take over. No matter how competent an AI robot is, it will not reach the level of understanding that we humans have, at least not any time soon.


What about Artists?
Technology has already had an enormous impact on the economy of the arts. And no matter how much we wish that was not the case, it is likely that all of these jobs will be influenced by AI in some way or another.

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