What profession do you think will be obsolete in the next 20 years?

View the original post on Musing.io

It's a good question and if you have a look over some of the more notable futurists predictions on the Internet you'll see many differing opinions. One thing that is largely agreed upon is that trades which require someone to have knowledge and then pass that on might become relatively unsustainable. it's often suggested that lawyers and accountants will become unnecessary but that's debatable because particularly in the case of lawyers we'd need to see some truly impressive improvements in AI for a computer to defend a client in court for example. I do believe this will come eventually but in 20 years? Possible but not definate. The one I think for sure will become obsolete, and it doesn't give me any pleasure to say so, is Librarians. I really can't see what purpose they would have as the world turns more and more digital. That's not to say we won't have libraries or books but the will probably become more like historical items and there's no real reason a computer could perform the tasks of signing out books and directing people to the correct section etc. I also think that as driverless cars become more and more prominent we may see a time when we don't have drivers - bus drivers, taxi drivers and lorry drivers but, again, possibly not in the next 20 years (although we will see the numbers of people doing these jobs drastically reduced it may not be truly obsolete)

Anyone in manufacturing also might struggle to find work. Robots are already creating less and less jobs in industries like car manufacturing and food manufacturing.

If you were to ask the same question about 50 years then we'd have a whole other story. I think ultimately computer technology and Ai may take over the vast majority of our Jobs, which might seem like a bad thing and short term and I guess it is but long term it means people won't have to work their whole lives as they do now just to sustain a decent(or even not so decent sometimes) living.