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Ask HN: What jobs will be big in the future that don't exist yet?

• codevark 4y ago
• spot5010 4y ago
  Ecogineer - ecology engineer.
• donutdan4114 4y ago
  Autopilot Unstucker: Your job will be to travel around to various roads in your city where an AI driven vehicle has gotten stuck and move it. Robot Janitor: as more and more robots take over menial jobs someone’s gotta clean and maintain them. Virtual Friend: become a friend to a random person online. Chat with them, play games, etc. will be more and more common as the loneliness epidemic grows exponentially over the next few decades. Prompt Expert: a person who comes up with better and more creative prompts for AI generated content. Including AI generated images, music, and likely movies and shows, architecture and design in the future.
  • passion__desire 4y ago
    Experience designer. (for the last one with multimedia experiences)
    • more_corn 4y ago
      Nice one
  • Buttons840 4y ago
    > Virtual Friend: become a friend to a random person online. Chat with them, play games, etc. will be more and more common as the loneliness epidemic grows exponentially over the next few decades. How about "Virtual Non-Romantic Matchmaker". Pair up lonely people with similar interests who just want to be friends and play games, etc. Wonder how much of this could be solved by removing the automation around matchmaking in online games. I used to find a server with a good ping and mods / rules that I liked and then I'd usually see the same people day after day, eventually people would start saying "hi" to me or laughing at my gameplay even though I made minimal effort to connect with them.
    • donutdan4114 4y ago
      Huh, actually it would be interesting if online matchmaking in games took into account more of what you’re looking for in a friend. Like if it prioritized matching you with people in similar age brackets and maybe could take into account other interests… so it’d be like the people you’re playing with would make someday likely friends. They could show your match score so you would immediately know if another player had similar interests… I kinda wish that existed!!
      • tinym 4y ago
        The skill-based matchmaking that's popular today is optimized for setting up a fair game, ie. theres a roughly 50/50 chance of either side winning. It makes logical sense, but it turns out nobody actually wants a fair match!
        • Buttons840 4y ago
          The old style of games had privately hosted servers, each able to host about 30 people. These games allowed people to drop in and out at will. Newer games are more match focused, with shorter matches and a focus on players completing matches. It would still be nice to join a small pool of 30 players and create smaller matches from that pool, but this would require people in the pool to sometimes wait for the next match to form. Balancing would not be hard, just make sure skill is as evenly distributed as possible. All this would allow match focused gameplay while keeping the pool of players small enough to build a community. Someone recently commented on HN that online cheating is a social problem, and can be solved by playing with a curated group of players. I agree, and think this could also help with cheating.
  • jmrm 4y ago
    > Autopilot Unstucker I think this could be a job for the same people who work when a tree fall in the middle of the road and they remove it.
  • DangitBobby 4y ago
    Ah "Virtual Friend" reminds me of FriendProxy from Maniac: > Another equally depressing tech-inspired service in Maniac is called FriendProxy, a fictional company that lets you hire random strangers to pretend to be your close friends. As one customer notes, “I have real friends, this is just more convenient.” Let's go ahead and add AdBuddy to your list: > Targeted advertising takes its logical next step in Maniac with AdBuddy, a company that lets you pay for other products and services by listening to some schlub read advertisements to you. Can’t afford a train ticket? Ride with an AdBuddy. Hungry? AdBuddy will pay for your lunch — if you listen to advertisements while you eat. 1. https://www.inverse.com/article/49305-maniac-netflix-adbuddy-friendproxy-depressing-tech https://www.inverse.com/article/49305-maniac-netflix-adbuddy...
    • trenning 4y ago
      Maniac is a great watch. Really hit some good dystopian/alternative future vibes.
    • undeIays 4y ago
      Next you'll tell we have to suffer ads and promotional marketing for rewards or donations just to check out at the pharmacy!
    • bananaowl 4y ago
      Is advertising to people without money a good business?
      • baremetal 4y ago
        it is if people are given UBI.
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    > Virtual Friend Virtual AI Friends that are better than humans on how they deal with you are more likely to exist.
    • scaramanga 4y ago
      Which will continue to be more of a commentary on the continuing decline and collapse of society, and the ability of people to seamlessly enter delusional states when given only the most superficially convincing data, than it is on the advancements of "AI" :)
    • speedgoose 4y ago
      Fore sure. Replika is already doing pretty well for many people.
    • more_corn 4y ago
      People never behave how we are supposed to behave. AI will be way better at behaving properly. The minute AI lovers exist a huge percentage of the population is going to give up on human lovers entirely. No cheating, no fighting, emotionally stable. Proper conflict resolution. Although AI does get weird sometimes.
  • more_corn 4y ago
    Love the unstuck er. There was a street in San Fran where way mo cars kept getting stuck. https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726534/waymo-autonomous-vehicles-stuck-san-francisco-dead-end https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726534/waymo-autonomou...
  • spookierookie 4y ago
    "as the loneliness epidemic grows exponentially over the next few decades" hasn't that happened already?
  • CM30 4y ago
    > Virtual Friend: become a friend to a random person online. Chat with them, play games, etc. will be more and more common as the loneliness epidemic grows exponentially over the next few decades. Reminds me of those services in Japan where you can hire people to act as relatives or simply be there to talk to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rental_family_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rental_family_service I suspect online versions either exist already, or will exist soon enough.
• bell-cot 4y ago
  Martian colonist? (Though the reality is likely to be grueling, risky work, no matter how sepia-toned the sky. With a tiny number of actual positions.) Lunar colonist? (Similar, though "colonist" might be a bit less hyper-optimistic a title.) Fusion power plant operator. Nanoengineer. "Impossible food" flavor/texture/etc. artist. (Kinda like a chef, with not-quite-Star-Trek food-making technology.)
  • Grimburger 4y ago
    > colonist These jobs are not going to be given to anyone but the overqualified and irreplaceable anytime soon, a massive failure of space programs. Personally think the boring inconsequential types who society won't fulminate for years over their loss should undertake such risks and them alone. There's more at stake than some idiotic bad press here. > Nanoengineer Degrees in nanotechnology have been available for 2 decades now, it's basically a combination of materials science heavy physics and chemistry combined. We also had a bit of biotech thrown in, which I think is probably the most exciting future of nanotech as it stands today.
  • scaramanga 4y ago
    This wins the prize for the most nightmarish scenario of all. Here are the assumptions it's based on: 1. Not content with having burned through earth's resources, transmuting them in to garbage and pollution, we fly to space, a hugely energy intensive enterprise which sources even more raw materials to convert in to garbage and pollution. 2. Having had unlimited energy in the form of fossil fuels, humanity causes climate change bad enough to eventually wipe out most species and all of civilisation, driving humans to the very brink of survival. Now, given a new unlimited power source, what next? Escape all responsibility and push forward business-as-usual for a few more decades, maybe a lifetime, to ensure that we eventually asset-strip everything in reach and wipe out all hope for humanity to ever rebuild a civilisation. 3. ??? 4. But as all the cattle die off due to the heat, we'll still have burgers with a satisfying mouthfeel, so that'll be nice.
    • shrimp_emoji 4y ago
      1. All life on Earth, including human life, has a much better chance of surviving a billion years into the future if we make it interplanetary -- billionS of years into the future if we make it interstellar. 2. Nuclear is the only obvious alternative to fossil fuels. 3. ¿¿¿ 4. There's no reason to believe handling climate change is hopeless, and there's reason to believe it's hopeful. The biosphere's natural lifespan[0] not so much. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future "500–600 million -- By this time, carbon dioxide levels will fall to the point at which C3 photosynthesis is no longer possible. All plants that utilize C3 photosynthesis (≈99 percent of present-day species) will die.[76] The extinction of C3 plant life is likely to be a long-term decline rather than a sharp drop. It is likely that plant groups will die one by one well before the critical carbon dioxide level is reached. The first plants to disappear will be C3 herbaceous plants, followed by deciduous forests, evergreen broad-leaf forests and finally evergreen conifers.[69]"
• moron123 4y ago
  AI prompter
• hnthrowaway0328 4y ago
  AI trainer? I have a dystopian view of the future world so I think a lot of tech work will focus on monitoring, analyzing and predicting. AI is going to play a big part of it but I don't think General AI is going to be easy. Most likely people will simply train AI accordingly, like the mainframe operators. Low pay but stable work. Tech archaeologist? Going forward a hundred years probably someone has to dig some tech and manual out and re-create them. A lot of the material is online now but imagine what happens if archive.org is forced to shutdown and the data is lost forever to the general public.
  • brudgers 4y ago
    AI trainer already exists. They are called “Amazon Mechanical Turks.” The dystopian future is already here. It just isn’t evenly distributed.
    • markus_zhang 4y ago
      Yep it's already here. Sad.
• wwilim 4y ago
  Look for new but already existing jobs which have fewer than a few dozen people worldwide working them. High density hydroponic farmer? Zero-G farmer? Artificial meat engineer?
• mbaytas 4y ago
  Copywriter.
• tmtvl 4y ago
  Flint knapper, fire keeper, and other post-apocalyptic Great Reset tasks.
  • mutt2016 4y ago
    Oddly, I believe this is probably most correct. Depends how far, but a collision with a celestial object or a big volcano could and will eventually end a lot of progress. Like.. Imagine Yellowstone blowing. Whoever survives the winter is gonna be the ones who knap.
  • scaramanga 4y ago
    Yeah, cheesemakers, smokers, curers, preservers, fermenters of all stripes, as temperatures increase, energy output declines, and energy demands increase, we'll be having to find new ways to preserve local food products for consumption other than by refrigeration.
• type0 4y ago
  LSD trip guide
• dustinmoris 4y ago
• meiraleal 4y ago
  robotsitter: in the future humans will take care of robots, one person will take care of many simple ones and many people will team to take care of one very complex. It already happens in some factories by in a few decades it will be everywhere.
• justsayinginnt 4y ago
  Tanglement co-ordinator - Someone who can determine whether an object is quantumly entangled with a pair elsewhere. eMUA - someone who can spruce up your online avatar with the latest looks or graphical techniques/trends. Like going to a IRL stylist. Privacy Agent - someone you pay when your personal/online details has been hacked into to resolve the situation. Or someone you pay to do a periodic check-up to mitigate them being stolen. Similar to a lawyer who you call when you’re in trouble or a bodyguard to stop you getting into trouble in the first place.
  • tagami 4y ago
    eMUA - see Second Life
• jstarfish 4y ago
  Sanitation Engineer. (In the context of finding innovative ways to recycle garbage for rare resources.)
  • revolvingocelot 4y ago
    Funny way to talk about the noble-yet-maligned trashminer. Political correctness gone mad!!
    • scaramanga 4y ago
      I'd go for "resource recovery technician" myself :)
• Qem 4y ago
  - Pollinator drone swarm pilot; - Landfill miner; - Waterfighter (like firefighters, but to quash leaks in barriers built to contain rising seas); - Antarctic illegal migrant (after temperatures rise and becomes too dangerous to move into the global north due to xenophobia);
  • scaramanga 4y ago
    I live in somewhere affected by an excess of water due to climate change (but from heavy rain, not so much sea-level rise). With things like flood defences, once they are breached, it is too late to patch them. You tend to just let the damage get done, and repair it once the acute problem is over with. And maybe build them back better. You get the chance to do that because sea-level rise isn't monotonic: unexpected storm surges and things happen which expose the weak spots and then the water recedes and you get a chance to rebuild. It's extremely dangerous to go out during flooding when water is more than ankle or knee deep or so. I suspect that what a waterfighters job would be is more like going out in amphibious vehicles to rescue humans ala https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1057767.html https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1...
    • blackbrokkoli 4y ago
      I mean, not denying it's dangerous, but stuff like piling up sandbags on top of a critically flooded dyke and lots and lots of related flooding work (picking up people from rooftops, rerouting traffic, ...) is a reality that many people living near the North Sea cost regularly participate in, as I can attest from personal experience.
  • garrickvanburen 4y ago
    Landfill miner!
    • quickthrower2 4y ago
      Looking for all those lost Bitcoins? Maybe Landfill archeologist too!
• walrus01 4y ago
  Food/parcel delivery robot rescue van guy. A person with a small electric (Ford Transit, etc) sized van that drives around dense urban area and retrieves sidewalk based/pedestrian area, stuck/failed/inoperable food/parcel delivery robots from public places and returns them to some regional repair depot.
  • toast0 4y ago
    Like a scooter picker upper.
• ffhhj 4y ago
  Fluid Worker (multi-professional) - A family or group will share the same virtual persona and take turns to work remotely as a single worker. In low-income regions large communities will share job positions with top salaries. A Fluid Worker Chief will be elected to visit the offices for events and parties. Burned-out individuals will be replaced by younger ones. After World Office War I the Fluid Worker will be legalized, and the roles in companies will be performed by sub-companies which are also allowed to contract their contractor recursively, producing the first Fluid Worker mega-mergers.
• yen223 4y ago
  "2022: “WOW you can write a prompt and an AI will draw it!” 2028: “You want to write a prompt? First you need to hire 10-15 promptOps Engineers to build out your PromptFlow pipelines which sends promptjobs to your PromptLake from the PromptQueue using the EventPrompt stream”" https://twitter.com/chrisalbon/status/1567688342124503040?s=21&t=KoK4N-JOjIgpsSEC1--SDw https://twitter.com/chrisalbon/status/1567688342124503040?s=...
  • cercatrova 4y ago
    GPT is already taking away prompt engineering so I doubt it'll exist all the way in 2028.
    • user_named 4y ago
      How is it taking away prompt engineering? Prompts still have to be written.
      • autoexec 4y ago
        In the future AI will do it.
      • rahimnathwani 4y ago
        I don't know about GPT, but people are already using Textual Inversion to turn examples into things that can be used as parts of prompts.
        • melonrusk 4y ago
          Adding "LARPing as evolution" to the list...
  • mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
    You also need to hire people to deal with the regulatory prompt framework.
• prettywoman 4y ago
  Any job that involves feelings or artistic sensibility will survive to AI apocalypse: Actor, psychologist, arts critic, etc...
  • scaramanga 4y ago
    Which is the situation we currently have where care-work (teacher, nurse, carer, etc.) are simultaneously the most in-demand, the least replaceable, but also the least rewarded.
• julianeon 4y ago
  One safe bet about the future would seem to be that environment degradation will worsen, and jobs connected to that will increase. We don’t think too carefully today about optimizing water usage, or protecting houses from wildfire. But there’s billions of dollars in assets that rely heavily on those things. So jobs linked to preserving their value will increase.
  • scaramanga 4y ago
    Yeah, how about preventing salt-water incursion in to building foundations from destroying buildings. How about retro-fitting subway tunnels to be resistant to storm surges? I think the problem with this is that it is very optimistic. The costs of doing all this work has to outpace (by some margin) the economic value of the asset being protected multiplied by how long the asset will be protected for. For that equation to work out positively depends on climate change being slow and gradual, not rapid and sudden. However, the CO2 outputs and temperature rises are exponential, not linear. Because they're a function of exponential population and economic growth. Many in-place fixed assets which are vulnerable will simply be abandoned, and the huge infra projects will never be viable (or the window of viability passed decades ago). You are already seeing it in New York (where no serious protection plan is in place) or Miami, where you're seeing deadly apartment building collapses because they couldn't spend $15m quickly enough to do the protection work (and, of course, if the apartment block was in a poor area and less profitable, it would never be economically viable to fix the problems). Edit: just to say though, I think you are quite right, jobs related to this will increase, just wanted to point out that the economics of many of them are complex/fraught propositions.
• 3qz 4y ago
  Any job likely to be replaced by AI will have 1 person overseeing the machines or programs that replaced 10 old employees ex. Person who remote controls a fleet of a dozen trucks to get them unstuck or person who approves AI drawings to verify they’re not offensive
  • scaramanga 4y ago
    More likely AI's will be replaced by people, who steadily become cheaper, and more disposable.
• mejutoco 4y ago
  Remote 6g operator. To deliver on the promise of self driving you remotely control delivery drones/trucks/cars for other people.
• 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Electric car charger repair business. Get the right contract and voom.
  • speedgoose 4y ago
    But it already exists.
• trenning 4y ago
  Space guide. When you and your billionaire friends and family go up to Bezos space cock orbiting facility you’ll need a full concierge and guides to show you around all the interesting bits you can observe from your temporary phallic residence.
  • scaramanga 4y ago
    Along the same lines, how about homoerotic fan-fiction author for billionaires. Oh shit, that already exists but is entirely voluntary :)
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  Zero gravity personal trainers. They get you physically ready for the flight. Help you to stay in shape in space. Then retrain you for 1G of force back on earth.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Satam 4y ago
  Digital Therapist: a person who helps you with your internet addiction Interpreter for AI: helps people understand what AI is trying to say Data Detective: someone who makes sure data is accurate and not tampered with
• charlie0 4y ago
  I think no one has mentioned bioengineers. We're going to be programming life in the future and will need engineers to design and create new biological things.
• pornel 4y ago
  Personal social credit manager. Every business you interact with will run an automatic background check on you based on all the data you've leaked on the Internet. Without a long history in the tracking databases, you'll be flagged as a bot or a suspicious person. So to live in such system and still have some privacy, you will hire a manager for your fake online persona who will specialize in generating plausible and inoffensive engagement metadata for your identities.
  • autoexec 4y ago
    This. Everyone is going to be assigned a place in one of several (and often secret) digital caste systems and you'll have to spend more and more of your time and money crafting and maintaining your "brand" to avoid being penalized and/or ostracized. Even as children everything from test scores and social interactions will be applied to your permanent record and mined for data. Before your kid's are even out of primary school Google will be able to predict how smart they are or have them flagged as anti-social.
  • more_corn 4y ago
    AI will handle this one.
• tagami 4y ago
  What age is appropriate for the reader? Ask your daughter’s class adding some silly and serious prompts. Perfect for a children’s book.
• rchaud 4y ago
  > chef How about "ghost kitchen solution architect"?
• lanietor 4y ago
  Metaverse adoption consultant , metaverse avatars designers, digital therapist for specific medical diseases, DAO regulators, digital bank cashiers, gaming ambassadors ……., any job you can imagine today it’s a real possibility in the future if you and your daughter create the need today !
• Flankk 4y ago
• rawgabbit 4y ago
  Urban salmon farmer (manage artificial rivers full of salmon) Industrial 3D Printer repairman (giant 3D printers that need repair) Molecular pharmacist (customizes medicine to best suit the patients needs)
• ls15 4y ago
  Restroom cleaners will earn much more than they do today. While many jobs will get automated, it turns out that building a robot that can clean arbitrary restrooms is as hard as building a self-driving car or harder, while the market incentives are missing. Restroom cleaners first need to be paid well enough (or the smell intensifies), before Elon Musk can become interested in toilet cleaning.
  • rahimnathwani 4y ago
    "building a robot that can clean arbitrary restrooms" Why wouldn't we just start building standardized restrooms that can be easily cleaned by robots?
    • ls15 4y ago
      That's just as hard, I think. We don't have standardized homes. Buying a cleaning robot that requires retrofitting your home first doesn't seem compelling to me.
  • davidhyde 4y ago
    Building cleaning robots that can be remotely controlled by a fleet of human operators working from home or in a call centre would be cheaper and safer than fully autonomous ones. I mean, gamers already pull off pretty amazing feats of control on the avatars they walk or drive around with.
    • ls15 4y ago
      That seems like a better idea. I guess the CleanBot operators would earn more than local restroom cleaners.
      • davidhyde 4y ago
        That depends on where they can operate from. I would imagine that local Swiss restroom cleaners would be paid more than remote workers operating from another country. Still, I don’t think that people would be happy with a camera operated robot sniffing around their restrooms. ;)
• mradek 4y ago
  Kind of OT, feel free to skip my naive thoughts. I was sort of hoping that cryptocurrency would cause a societal shift in the “value” of money. That is, it could have been used to solve some tough issues like elder care and mental health. Right now, a lot of PE companies are running these facilities on fumes and trying to get every penny they can off the lives of our families, friends, and neighbors. If “value” was shifted to something else, and not just exchanging for USD, I wonder if it could have been possible to start funding these sorts of activities based on societal good. Sorry if it sounds lame, but knowing some elderly and mentally challenged people in my life, I feel really bad when I think about how much they’ve been pushed aside and under the rug.
  • junofan 4y ago
    It’s not lame. When current money’s not fit for purpose, it makes sense to create new money. I think somewhat decoupling pieces of the economy similarly to how states have different currencies could create new and interesting jobs due to different rewards structures.
• throwaway5959 4y ago
  Assisted Suicide Practitioner.
• devoutsalsa 4y ago
  Hopefully Account Recovery Agent at companies like Google & Facebook. I’ll never rely on a service that is willing to delete my entire online life without recourse because some bot incorrectly thinks I’m a business risk.
  • MerelyMortal 4y ago
    They won't (don't?) delete your online life, they just lock you out of it. They'll still maintain your digital profile so they can add to it, just not let you edit it.
• mjan22640 4y ago
  having the fun and life when everything is automated
• johntopia 4y ago
  I bet as long as humans exist, safety-critical industries will not let go of human managers. That's a job that will not perish.
• vojd 4y ago
  DNA engineer DNA analyst DNA analytics based match/wedding maker DNA analytics based life/personal/job coach DNA analytics based future planner
• rrgok 4y ago
  - Mom as a Service: in a remote future, where the concept of family will vanish, the government will hire women as moms who will nurture the babies. New human children will not be born from anybody. You have to obtain a license to procreate and after that that the baby won't grow in your home but in specialized Growth Centers away from the biological parents. - Human Engineer: People who will investigate, analyze and give other people the license to procreate. The goal is to produce children who are fit (mentally, physcially...) to progress the society and all that.
  • blackcatchina 4y ago
• joshxyz 4y ago
  Space Cowboys?
  • anon1094 4y ago
    Bang...
• melonrusk 4y ago
  Some kind of priesthood based around tinned food and geiger counters.
  • NIL8 4y ago
    This sounds like an interesting writing prompt. I'd love to see this turned into a short story!
  • dunefox 4y ago
    The Mechanicum?
• baremetal 4y ago
  UBI recipient
• mikewarot 4y ago
  Curation has always been a job, but I think that someone who takes the flood of data, uses tools to search and index it, and make it usable, like librarians, and researchers, will always be in demand. I don't think that we'll be doing much in space, I don't think AI is going to take over the world. We'll still be farming, and mining, and making things. Farming will become a more localized activity, as the idea of regenerative agriculture spreads, the need for local management to manage things in detail, instead of massive monocultures, will require on site people. There will also be a strong need for repair and maintenance. TV and Radio repair was a thing, then it almost died out... something like that will definitely be making a comeback in the years and decades ahead. We'll not be able to simply discard all the embedded energy in a perfectly good item that only needs a small repair, or maintenance. A strong emphasis on quality and durability is coming.
• supertofu 4y ago
  Water guards. Private security guarding fresh water sources.
• tarunmuvvala 4y ago
  Robot Trainer - They will train bots to do new works. Robot Safety specialist - As bots take over manufacturing, they will work more and more with human. You will have a person who train Robot to safely work with humans. Drone Pilots/Drivers - These people will be responsible for driving drone in unplanned and unprepared scenarios