Speaking of AI (artificial intelligence), we are most familiar with Google's "AlphaGo". In May 2017, at the Wuzhen Go Summit in China, the "Alpha Dog" played against the world's no. 1 world Go champion Ke Jie and won with an aggregate score of 3-0, and since then the Go community has recognized that the chess strength of Alpha Go has surpassed the top level of human professional Go.
Photo of Ke Jie's battle against AlphaGo in 2017
Perhaps, the artificial intelligence of alpha dogs is still far from us ordinary people, but many weak artificial intelligences have gradually penetrated into our daily work and life, such as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Xiaomi's little love classmates and other artificial intelligence assistants, such as the AI advertising telemarketer you receive speaking fluent Mandarin, such as the artificial intelligence robot you meet in the hotel corridor and so on.
We have to admit that in the future, the competitors in the workplace are likely to no longer be human, and the real covetousness of your work may be "robots".
At the same time, we also received a lot of confusion from young friends, how should we choose a career in the future? Which careers will be replaced by AI in the future? Which careers will become popular in the future? Therefore, at the beginning of this 2022, 36Kr and Zhihu jointly launched a question about the "future career", inviting more than 100 respondents from different fields to participate in the answers, hoping to broaden the horizons, bring help, resonate with young friends, and gain something after watching it.
1. Which occupations are most likely to be replaced by AI in the next decade? @ Yuanxia (Zhihu Science Field Respondent)
Jobs that don't involve creativity, such as manual labor, are more likely to be replaced by AI in the next decade. In fact, Amazon in the United States is already relying on AI to fire employees, and through AI and robots to save costs.
@Chen Min (Zhihu Health Field Respondent)
The industries most likely to be replaced by AI are obvious, starting with certainly simple and repeatable physical labor (ongoing), followed by mental work that requires a little thought (which is about to happen), and finally the bottom layer of all occupations being replaced by AI.
@ Ling Chumian (Zhihu Health Field Respondent)
It can't be said that creative work will not be replaced by AI, to some extent, our artificial intelligence technology is stronger than the computing power of the human brain, even in a specific complex work scenario, it will slowly compete with humans.
According to the "probability of elimination" of 365 occupations studied by Cambridge scholars in the future, telemarketers, typists, and accountants are the three occupations that are most easily replaced by AI. Relatively speaking, dietitians, doctors, and dentists are less likely to be replaced by AI.
But in addition to the universally accepted "simple and repeatable work is easily replaced by AI", can creative work really be "safe"? We also invited some "creative work" guests to listen to their different perspectives.
@ A Man Wandering (Zhihu Science Answerer)
In the past, the idea was that only repetitive work would be replaced by AI, but in my industry, there have been cases of AI writing. In terms of knowledge, there is an AI respondent called "Forty-Two", whose answer is so smooth that you can hardly see that behind the screen is an AI, and even has formed its own unique "style".
Knowing that the AI answered the answer of the lord "forty-two"
@ Xiao Han (Zhihu Music Field Respondent)
As a music critic, I mentioned that a future is likely to be replaced, but at the moment there are only a few AI workers in the field of concern - composing.
I've read some papers before, someone used deep learning methods to study Mozart's score, and finally the artificial intelligence can write its own music that is very similar to Mozart's style. If artificial intelligence learns to judge what kind of music is good, and then after a long period of calculation by the neural network, what kind of music will it create? Will the twelve-tone system collapse? It's something to think about, but it's also a future that's incredibly exciting.
@ Light Color Memories (Zhihu ACG Field Respondent)
In the game industry, people with creativity and aesthetics will be more and more valued. And those at the grassroots level, who simply perform tasks, are the most likely to be replaced by AI, because the current technology can automatically generate a lot of things, even better than people make.
@QianSur (Zhihu Health Field Respondent)
For the profession of doctor, some traditional auxiliary departments in the hospital will be replaced, such as film reading, laboratory reports, pathology... It is said that now AI looking at chest x-rays can reach the level of associate professors. In the field of surgery, in recent years, da Vinci surgical robots are very hot, and the surgery of our hospital is now general, exophthalmic and other departments has increasingly used da Vinci for some minimally invasive surgery.
Think about it, as these surgical robots perform more and more surgeries, they may one day be able to replace doctors to do the operations themselves through continuous practice, self-learning, and correction.
After reading the views of so many guests, let's help you make a summary, what types of work are easy to be replaced by AI? What types of work still have to be done by humans?
In simple terms, if your job includes the following three types of skill requirements, the possibility of being replaced by AI is very small:
1. Social skills, negotiation skills and the art of human emotion;
2. Compassion, and sincere support and concern for others;
3. Creativity and aesthetics.
If your job includes the following three types of features, the likelihood of being replaced by AI is high:
1. Skills that can be mastered through training without talent;
2, a lot of repetitive labor, every day to work without the need to use the brain, but the hands are familiar;
3, the work space is small, sitting in the cubicle room, do not hear the world.
After talking about the most and least likely occupations to be replaced by AI, standing in the present and looking at the future, let's talk about "What new trends will emerge in the workplace in different fields and industries in the future?" ”
2. What are the new trends in the future workplace? @ Teacher Ah Yuan (Zhihu Health Field Respondent)
In the next ten years, I think there will be a workplace for the elderly, and due to the intensification of aging and the extension of the retirement age, there will be more and more elderly people in the workplace. At the same time, workplace services and pension services around the elderly will also become new workplace opportunities.
Japan's population is aging, and elderly workers can be found everywhere on the streets of Tokyo
@chenqin (Zhihu Financial Field Respondent)
From my own perspective, flexible working hours, no workplace restrictions and the gig economy will be the new trend. The period of oligopoly is over, the knife is licking blood, and the possibility of getting rich overnight is getting smaller and smaller.
For highly skilled people, the attractiveness of binding a business and growing with the enterprise is also reduced. These people will want to have more opportunities and teams to play to their comparative advantage, and use more flexible ways of working and delivering to obtain a freer life.
With the development of the Internet, the future workplace may be atomized, that is, no longer in the company as the center, everyone chooses to work from home, meetings and discussions are carried out online, the epidemic has actually had some trends, Google has begun to implement, although it is temporary, but who can guarantee that the future will not become a trend.
In fact, this is a win-win situation for the company and employees, the former can save a lot of expenses (office, computer, broadband), the whole staff to achieve cloud office, while the latter saves a lot of energy, what is more relaxed and free environment than at home. As for the issue of efficiency, it is not necessary not to touch the fish in the company.
@ Yuanxia (Zhihu Science Field Respondent)
Personally, I believe that with the development of social trends and the decline of the economy, hybrid office will be more common, and many companies choose shared space and shared office. At the same time, I personally believe that the trend of "inner volume" will gradually be changed, and a new generation of professionals will pay more attention to their inner feelings and lives, thus forcing them to eliminate "inner volume". In the next decade, freelancers, through some platforms to become suppliers to some companies, will become a more common phenomenon.
@ Frank Young (Know the Workplace Respondent)
Personally, I think there will be a big trend in the future workplace, that is, academic qualifications will no longer become so important.
With the development of technology, all kinds of tools will be invented, everyone can find a more than academic qualifications to prove themselves, for example, many programmers will write on GitHub, if you are a person who has made important contributions to multiple projects, I believe that when you go to apply for a job that requires certain technologies, no one will care what your education is.
All walks of life will have a tool similar to or more powerful than GitHub that you can use to demonstrate your abilities in a certain area fairly and impartially, which is a more accurate way to convey your ability to work in a certain direction than your education.
@ Ned (Zhihu Sports Respondent)
With the birth of the metaverse, there will be many novel professions, such as human body function caretakers, the soul maintains the minimum function in the metaverse body, and the real world human body maintenance is handed over to professional institutions.
@ Spokesperson for the Deceased (Zhihu Health Field Respondent)
In reality, most occupations will also correspond to the metaverse, and the difference is nothing more than the scene, content and method of the specific work. For example, the face pincher that may be born in the metacosm is highly overlapping with the real plastic surgeon. It's just that face pinching in the virtual world will be more free, casual, and fast, but it is not inevitable to call it a "metaverse plastic surgeon".
What we can foresee is that the future workplace will change exponentially, and the demand and value of advanced mental work will become more and more large, and artificial intelligence will take on more and more routine and repetitive tasks in the future, and even assist us in making decisions.
It is undeniable that some types of work do have the possibility of being replaced by AI, and even some people will face layoffs or transfers, which require us to prepare in advance. But this does not mean that AI is our enemy, we should follow the principle that we should follow is to do what AI can not do, through cooperation with AI, become a more powerful species, touch and achieve more achievements that predecessors dare not think and dare not do.