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Ask HN: Which skills are least likely to be replaced by AI?
What kind of skills do you think will be the least likely to be replaced by AI? I'm not just talking about technical skills, but non-technical ones as well.
Such as creativity, emotional intelligence, leadership/people management, negotiation skills, motor/hand eye coordination, critical thinking skills...
- LeeroyWasHere 3y agoTook them 15 years to replace cashiers with a touch screens in McDonald's. "AI" still can't drive a car.
- muneface 3y agoMaking babies.
- miravmehta 3y agoBasic communication with human interaction. Soft kills >> hard kills AI is assistance not an replacement to a lot extent
- Qem 3y agoProbably those that require a combination of some high level cognitive processes, tacit knowledge, and physical actuation in uncontrolled environments. For example, plumbers probably aren't going to be replaced any soon. Surgeons too. But between surgeons and plumbers, the latter will take more time to be replaced, because a construction site is less of a controlled environment than a surgery room.
- ilaksh 3y agoYou didn't give a time frame. So I would say, there are no skills that cannot be replaced by AI in an indefinite time frame. AI might have mastered just about every skill or capability within 10 or 20 years. Some people suspect less. Your list isn't really just skills but more generally abilities. Emotional IQ - See the Inflection 2.5 model (Pi). Creativity - Ask ChatGPT to help you be creative writing poetry and then creating paintings of the poems. Leadership/management - Claude 3 or GPT4 might be better than the average manager. 70% of my bosses have been barely competent pr!cks though, so I may be biased. Negotiation is not that complex actually. It's boils down to being willing to walk away. Leading LLMs can be good negotiators already. Hand-eye coordination - not for every single task, but we have robots that can play ping pong, juggle, catch balls, and solve a Rubik's cube faster than humanely possible. Critical thinking skills: put the average person off the street against Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4 Turbo and have them take a GRE or similar test. I would bet on the AI. For your list, we are already there. I think that "replaced" is not necessarily the best way to think about it though. People still play chess. Or run. Or Jeopardy. We still have plenty of amateur artists that just want to imitate their favorite cartoon or whatever. Even though AI can do all of that better and faster now. But wait 10 or 20 years. There will be very realistic and fully capable simulations of humans.
- barbazoo 3y ago> But wait 10 or 20 years. There will be very realistic and fully capable simulations of humans. So sometime between FSD and fusion as an energy source.
- sgtpepper1235 3y agoPerfect
- schwartzworld 3y agoThis is comment is the problem with AI. You listed a bunch of things as proof that AI can replace human skills but many are wrong or at least require moving the goal post. Poetry and lyrics from AI are usually lame and formulaic. A robot solving a Rubik's cube is less impressive than a human doing so, since Rubik's cube is basically about memorizing the algorithm. Chatgpt might be better than your manager, but managers don't lead. Every manager I've reported to has basically had the job of primarily relaying communication from above.
- andy99 3y agoInvestigative skills. AI can't do anything a detective does. Formulating a theory, testing it, refining it etc. Also quickly grabbing arbitrarily shaped objects from a pile.
- sweetheart 3y agoI'm not disagreeing, but this answer is ironic considering how Ilya Sutskever once used detective work as a way to describe the relationship between LLMs and "understanding": "So, I’d like to take a small detour and to give an analogy that will hopefully clarify why more accurate prediction of the next word leads to more understanding, real understanding. Let’s consider an example. Say you read a detective novel. It’s like complicated plot, a storyline, different characters, lots of events, mysteries like clues, it’s unclear. Then, let’s say that at the last page of the book, the detective has gathered all the clues, gathered all the people and saying, “okay, I’m going to reveal the identity of whoever committed the crime and that person’s name is”. Predict that word. Predict that word, exactly. My goodness. Right? Yeah, right. Now, there are many different words. But predicting those words better and better and better, the understanding of the text keeps on increasing. GPT-4 predicts the next word better."
- andy99 3y agoHe's talking about the model as a "decider" which it's good at, not a detective or investigator.
- ilaksh 3y agoFor the model to output the highest likelihood for the correct token, it must literally solve the mystery by inference with the given clues/narrative.
- andy99 3y agoThat's completely different from investigation which involves iteratively hypothesizing and gathering evidence, and at each step coming up with ideas from an open field of possibilities. Having everything laid out for you as a classification problem and then just pronouncing is what ML models do very well and is an unrelated problem formulation. "AI" is great at solving well defined problem. Deciding there is a problem, formulating it, deciding and collecting what you need to solve or test it, iterating, not so much.
- keiferski 3y agoAnything that involves in-person charisma will not be replaced for centuries, if ever. Ditto for any kind of writing or communication skills that are counter-cultural in nature. It seems pretty clear that the AIs corporations are creating are pretty aligned with whatever values the powers-that-be have. I don't expect AI to invent the equivalent of punk rock.
- giantg2 3y agoWho needs charisma if you're a robot overlord? Motivation could be achieved by other means, and if AI is really that smart, they will see that.
- keiferski 3y agoRobot overlords aren't going to take over the world anytime soon. Real life isn't a sci-fi novel.
- Jensson 3y agoPredictability and objectivity of a robot >>> charisma for most jobs. People prefer not to deal with people, to do stuff via web forms instead of phone calls etc. In person charisma is also easily done via robots by just giving them an animated avatar, that robot will outperform 99% of humans easily since humans have a hard time faking emotions while a robot doesn't, they can fake being excited or sad or understanding every time and always be there for you unlike real humans. The only reason that is hard for humans isn't that it is hard to do the action, but that it is hard to control our emotions.
- sans_souse 3y agoArt. By definition, and applied broadly across fields. And I mean real art, not generic, cookie cutter, mass-production "art" (that can be replaced, and makes up the majority)
- ardaoweo 3y agoSome forms of art will be more protected than others. Think of somebody who builds unique artwork by hand 100% from random wood and other material found in the nature. Good luck having AI robots pick those from the wilderness, put them together, or 3D print a fake one that looks exactly like a real thing.
- red-iron-pine 3y agowhat is "real art"? what you're at it, define what a True Scotsman is for me. for every artist getting a residency at MoMA there are dozens more doing logos, UI, concept design, etc., and those people are getting slammed right now. but yeah, the one-off person getting a grant from somewhere to do art might be able to hit median US income -- AI-proof!
- softwaredoug 3y agoI hope we can find a path to a post-scarity, Star Trek world, where people can pursue passions without worrying about marketability and whether "AI" whatever will replace you. I can get great furniture at Ikea, but some people build furniture because they love it.
- latexr 3y ago> I hope we can find a path to a post-scarity, Star Trek world, where people can pursue passions without worrying about marketability and whether "AI" whatever will replace you. *Shakes AI Magic 8 Ball* “Outlook not so good”. The people with money are more concerned with dreaming about bunkers managed robots than solving any real actionable problems. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60165391 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60165391 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwJQEAI_KE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwJQEAI_KE0 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- buzzert 3y agoSo, you're saying we're hopeless without the help of billionaires?
- bonton89 3y agoEven Star Trek had a World War 3 that destroyed most of the human population before rationality finally prevailed.
- neonnoodle 3y agoHigh manual dexterity in cramped, wet, poorly-lit environments.
- hnthrowaway0328 3y agoAnything protected by a union or government. Anything that is physical and not 100% replicable. Anything that is interpersonal relationship.
- GoldenMonkey 3y agoSeems like interpersonal relationship can be ai... in japan there are ai dating bots.
- downboots 3y agohttps://m.imdb.com/name/nm1012434/mediaviewer/rm3616608768/ https://m.imdb.com/name/nm1012434/mediaviewer/rm3616608768/
- skwee357 3y agoAny physical type of jobs: house repairs such as painting, building, etc. Roof cleaning, moving furniture. Physical therapists like massage/needles/etc. Physical teaching like 1:1 practices of martial arts/dances/etc.
- dagw 3y agoPhysical teaching like 1:1 practices of martial arts/dances/etc. There are whole host of companies offering various apps where you film yourself doing a sport or activity and an AI will give you advice on what you are doing wrong and how to improve. They might not be great now, but in a few years they will probably be as good as most average coaches/trainers.
- skwee357 3y agoYeah, well. I train in boxing 1:1. No app in existence can replace a physical coach for when we do training on the pads, let alone sparring. I bet, in some distant future, a robot might replace my coach. But it's very likely that by then I'll turn into a power cell for a huge electrical grid for robot survival.
- GoldenMonkey 3y agophysical engineering. That will take a while.
- roydivision 3y agoTech CEOs
- emestifs 3y agoOP was asking about least likely
- throwaway290 3y agoensuring and enforcing ethical applications of ML standup comedy
- xutopia 3y agoMy plumber seems pretty safe about AI at least for next century. Unless houses are rebuilt with standards and ease of repairability in mind. But even changing all the houses in the world to this new system would take over a hundred years.
- tyingq 3y agoPrepping a young person to be on a path to eventually owning their own plumbing, HVAC, roofing, etc, business does seem a pretty solid plan. Though I suppose AI could be part of something that squashes small businesses and funnels work to huge companies. Which would make that entrepreneur angle a bit harder. There's already a fair amount of SEO gaming to make something that isn't "local" appear to be local.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoI'd expect roofing to be less immune. No offense to any roofers out there, but roofing is a lot more formulaic than plumbing or HVAC. I don't think it would be hard at all to design a robot to roof the large flat areas typical of modern architecture (if it can be dignified by that name), maybe with a human or two to make sure the robot keeps working, and to handle any peaks, valleys, plumbing or heating penetrations, or other weird areas.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoyeah but roofs aren't formulaic -- even subtle looking differences == big challenges in climbing and hoisting -- and even if you have rows of tract housing with identical builds you're going to run into problems getting things up there because access, yards, fences, etc. all get difficult and complex. source: used to dispatch for HVAC, roofing, and paving services.
- Turing_Machine 3y agohttps://www.renovaterobotics.com/ https://www.renovaterobotics.com/ Are you sure about that?
- ardaoweo 3y agoMotor/hand eye coordination most definitely. That's what millions of years evolution has optimized us for more than anything else. Anything involving manipulating and movement in varying physical environments remains a hard problem to solve in cost-effective manner, despite all the money poured to self-driving cars and general purpose robotics. Of course we have solutions that work in specific contexts, factory or lab environment, but that's about it. I believe emotional intelligence will become a close second. As long as we don't have perfected humanoid robots like in TV series Westworld, people will likely prefer genuine human contact in certain situations (psychologist, therapist, service sector, nursing...)
- Havoc 3y agoTour guide, nurses, physio, child care, psychologist. Anything in front of a screen is vulnerable The only profession where I’m 100% confident it’ll survive is the oldest profession
- stefs 3y agomobile phones with tour guide apps: knows where you are and what you're looking at and can tell you everything about it. psychologist was one of the first ever applications of AI - remember eliza. but child care, nurses and physio are, imo, safe.
- ardaoweo 3y agoI predict that rich people will continue to pay for a real psychologist to get genuine human contact. Meanwhile, the big masses of poorer people will eventually get to enjoy LLM-powered AI ones, which may be an improvement or a downgrade depending on the current state in their area. My country's state funded healthcare system is already utilizing web-based therapy, LLM's will just replace the human writing responses.
- mistrial9 3y agowar ?
- NateEag 3y agoProstitution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_profession_(phrase) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_profession_(phrase)
- ardaoweo 3y agoYes, I think nursing is perfect purely from a "not being replaced" perspective. An absolutely massive demand from aging population with lots of money, requires physical movement, eye-motor skills between and inside varying environments, like moving between old people's houses and then taking care of the people inside. On top of all that, a real human nurse could (ideally, when not worked to death) give genuine human emotional understanding.
- ycuser2 3y agoBeing myself.
- anileated 3y agoArt is never going to be replaced by ML-generated works, because art is self-expression and so requires there to be a self to express.
- Joeboy 3y agoIf you're a starving artist, AI poses absolutely no threat to your position.
- smokel 3y agoThat may be the case for some art, but self-expression is not something I strive for in my own art. Just to list one example.
- ben_w 3y agoSelf expression is relevant to what I do in private, but not only am I happy to act as a stereotypically annoying client (you know the type) to an infinitely patient AI in order to find expression for what I want, in addition to that, the art I make by my own hand (even including non-AI programs like Blender) has negligible market value.
- anileated 3y agoIt is that already by default, without even trying. The beauty of how the mind works.
- lordnacho 3y agoResponsibility. As separate from technical ability. You won't be able to replace doctors, because you want someone to say "I'm a doctor and you need this surgery". What will happen is the doctor will get an AI to help him, and then he will rubber stamp the diagnosis. He captures the gains. Pilots and captains are also one of these. Someone's gotta be responsible for the people on board, even if a computer is already doing everything on a normal day.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> Someone's gotta be responsible for the people on board, even if a computer is already doing everything on a normal day. Military planes have been way beyond unassisted human control for a long time now. I see no reason why airliners won't go down the same road (you can literally see it happening as we speak). It turns out that dynamic instability has some real advantages (e.g., maneuverability), if you have a computer to help keep the thing from going out of control.
- 9659 3y agoThe military is reluctant to take the decision to kill someone out of human control. The AI may fly the plane, but the trigger is squeezed by a human.
- anilr 3y agoI'll disagree with this take too. In cases where AI is comparable or only slightly better I'd agree many would prefer a human doing this task. However when AI does a job better people will be fine with AI taking on the role. We are fine with computer controlled subway lines, dishwashers, and some even driverless cars. We are happy let machines do tasks if we're confident they will do them well.
- ben_w 3y agoRight now, AI need a huge number of examples to reach decent performance. Therefore, things where a huge number of training examples don't exist and can't be generated by a simulation or self-play. When AI get past that problem, I expect the whole global economy to shift in a couple of months[0]. Also, things where the point is to be human. Working for rich people in any capacity may fill this role, for the same reason they by watches which cost more than apartments yet keep worse time than a Casio F91W. [0] I'm also assuming this is more likely to happen after we get a significant number of android robot workers; if it happens before that point, then it may take a year or two for the global economy to shift.
- leashless 3y agoCame here to say this. And to add: we don't know to what degree human behaviour is regular. It could be that in practice an AI can't really generalise well to All People compared to humans, because the humans are so diverse and the humans who are doing some jobs generalise to just the small set of people they are working with. Right now it does look like prompts like "answer this as if you're one of Napoleon's generals" work fairly well, but I wonder if in practice we'll find out that specific human experiences which are hard to document will turn out to create niches which AI is very very poor at dealing with. Potential examples: * what does it feel like to fall in love? humans can't describe well. * what does it feel like to summit Everest for the first time? ditto. * what are spiritual experiences like? Probably many other areas which are clearly important to people, particularly falling in love, but language is weak, and at the end of the day... It's a large language model.
- Buttons840 3y agoLawyers. I think AI can possibly replace lawyers, but the powerful people in society will do all they can to prevent it.
- glial 3y agoAI should replace lawyers, since they are essentially a regressive tax on engaging with the legal system.
- Buttons840 3y agoI agree. If access to the legal system becomes easy enough it will stress the system and get some parts of it fixed. Which is one reason I think lots of artificial barriers will prevent this from happening.
- dmazzoni 3y agoI do agree lawyers will always be needed. But, don't you think AI is already making lawyers dramatically more efficient? So much of what lawyers do is reading - reading possibly relevant case law, reading corporate communication. I met someone recently who has a law degree from a small no-name law school. He got mediocre grades. His job is sit in a room with 10 other lawyers, reading through every single document in a giant room full of filing cabinets. It's part of a corporate merger. It's going to take years to go through but they need lawyers to read through every single page looking for certain potential issues. That's the sort of thing I feel like will be eliminated.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothere will be a lawyer since they're licensed by the state bar, and to file certain things or do certain actions you need someone who can check the box, similar to formally certified medical or engineering workers. but a lot of law is review, of contracts, of statues, etc. and legal discovery companies are already a thing and were snagging a lot of marketshare before GPT exploded. "read each clause, identify weasel words, parties, and summarize each line or paragraph. then create a link to any relevant case law or statue for sanity checking" -- is already a thing. very little law actually happens via dramatic courtroom antics or powerful closing oration; most is summarizing things as mentioned above. just like how excel didn't eliminate accountants, but now instead of 10 you need 3, this will cut the already tight legal market down further.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoProstitution. Pornography is doomed, but we're a long way from realistic physical sex robots, AI powered or otherwise.
- chrischen 3y agoAI replacing skills is a moving target. Anything can be replaced by AI (more so information jobs) but as things are replaced humans just have to work harder to be novel. AI is by definition trained on the largest pool of examples, which means being novel will mean your skills are excluded by AI until it catches on. Of course being novel is something that perpetually happens. Ideally the world becomes a place where the AI and robots do the rote busy work and humans are relegated to finding novel solutions. Even before AI there was the issue of being replaced by cheaper labor. AI just happens to be computational cheap labor. Just be better at what you do to avoid being replaced.
- ctoth 3y ago> Just be better at what you do to avoid being replaced. Git gud! Great advice!
- dcchambers 3y agoPlumbers, locksmiths, carpenters, HVAC technicians, etc. Trade jobs that require very precise hand-eye coordination and the ability to perform in a wide variety of unpredictable environments. Nurses/MAs for the same reason, but also the fact that I think people in pain/sickness will still want human compassion. Even if AI and Robots may be able to do the job some day, people want to be helped by other people.
- ctoth 3y agoThe thing about AI is, the whole point is to replicate and eventually surpass what a human can do, so the eventual answer is nothing. What timescale are you working with? Are you trying to figure out your own career (good luck!) are you trying to advise a kid/student (maybe plumber, maybe?) but all of these are sort of just kicking the can. Probably one of the most important jobs now is figuring out what the hell the upcoming jobs/activities should auta be.
- Timber-6539 3y agoAI is a convenient scapegoat for putting people out of work and paying employees less than they deserve. No industry is safe from this malpractice as long as above is true.
- ergonaught 3y agoBarring global catastrophe resetting humanity's scientific and technological advancement, everything that can be automated will be automated. That's everything outside what could only be a niche market of "Certified Human-Produced". Countering that, in a way, barring major sociocultural shifts, the elite require serfs, so whatever it is that serfs can be made to do which is somehow necessary for perpetuating the power/financial structures which prop up the elites will be "spared" somehow. Your question seems to assume that there are some kind of practical human capabilities that cannot be automated. This is false.
- smokel 3y agoAs it stands, only things that are economically feasible to automate will be automated. A side effect of this is that labor wages have increased dramatically, thereby decreasing the possibilities of having unique stuff done. The unfolding of reality is not one linear equation.
- smokel 3y agoIt might be interesting to repeat the questions asked in the context of "bullshit jobs" and "leisure sciences" which were raised in the 1990s. People then assumed that through automation (not even intelligent automation) we would work less and do more interesting things. Boy were they wrong, and I wholeheartedly assume that we'll be wrong again about the next 20 years.
- ardaoweo 3y agoYep, if automation really accelerates there are two ways to prevent the collapse of the economic system as we know it now. Either invent lots bullshit jobs, or create universal basic income and pay people for doing nothing, or something unprofitable.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothe short story Maana talks about this. we go into it expecting more leisure time, but instead get automated slave drivers and get punted out of jobs. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
- pwillia7 3y agoHuman sacrifice. It's clear the most impactful things I do are when I travel and visit partners/customers and from a material standpoint those are some of the least impactful. I've come to believe the sacrifice is the thing -- that's why getting on a plane beats the best video conference and always will. The same thing will be true with AI. Genuine communication will only become more important and those who can communicate well and not sound like LLM drivel (even if it gets really good) will stand out.
- killthebuddha 3y agoSpoiler: this comment does not technically answer OP's question. Many of the answers in this thread talk about skills where AI seems unlikely to have any direct sort of impact at all (like plumbing). In my opinion, that could easily end up being technically correct but exactly wrong in spirit (assuming the ultimate goal is to have a good job). It's somewhat likely that AI-augmented or AI-enabled professions become so ludicrously profitable that any other profession becomes barely livable. Instead of trying to avoid AI it might make more sense to ride the wave. Dive right into some industry that's undergoing upheaval, work for AI-powered startups, learn about the technology, and meet the future head-on. I don't want to sound too "gung ho", I'm a software engineer who feels like my profession will be radically different in less than 10 years and I'm genuinely worried about staying relevant. But I think "staying relevant" is probably a better strategy than trying to get out of way.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> It's somewhat likely that AI-augmented or AI-enabled professions become so ludicrously profitable that any other profession becomes barely livable. It doesn't matter how much money you make. When your sewer backs up, someone has to fix it, and that person is gonna charge what the market will bear. If the professions become ludicrously profitable, the trades are going to increase their rates accordingly.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothe electricians around Ashburn, VA who service data centers get paid more than most of my network engineers. their boss got paid more than I did as a manager, if I believe the scuttlebutt they told us. hard work, on site -- i'm sitting pretty at home typing this -- and no real upwards growth, but there's big money in NoVA data centers and the tradesmen's pay reflects that.
- ben_w 3y agoLots of people think 13 is an unlucky number, so don't pick it on lotteries. But enough people know this fact to outnumber the superstitious, so it's actually one of the most chosen numbers. (Source: vague memory, as web searches give me "most drawn numbers" rather than "most popular numbers"). It's widely known that robots have bad vision and hand eye coordination, thus a common recommendation is to learn trade skills such as plumbing. I suspect that means there will be an over-supply of plumbers. Everyone needs food, too — much more critical to fix when it goes wrong than is sewage — but farming doesn't make you rich.
- emrah 3y agoIndustrialization replaced almost all physical labor in factories. Sure there are still some left but those are the ones cheaper to fill/program a human than a robot. AI will do the same, if allowed, eventually, to mental jobs
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoBy Moravec's paradox, the ones we find the simplest. So driving for Uber and mowing lawns.
- jamesponddotco 3y agoSysadmins, as we're the plumbers of the tech world. Someone gotta keep those servers running, right? Or maybe I just think that because I still consider myself one. Who knows.
- jacknews 3y agoI'm fairly sure the oldest of professions will be relatively immune to AI. But also teaching. AI might be better at teaching actual subjects, physics, maths, and so on, but a good part of school is socialization beyond the family, and that pretty much requires human teachers/coaches/guides/role-models.