Technology

I think ultimately this is going to become the crunch point. Because what kind of jobs can AI eventually take over (with appropriate robotics) in the mid-term future?

• Driving (if all cars were computer controlled today and roads were segregated from pedestrians, it'd probably already be possible)
• Likely end to end delivery could be automated. Large amounts of the process already are
• Train (and bus based on item 1) drivers. Currently, much of the urban transit systems around the world are ATO, where the train controller opens/closes doors and starts the train and is primarily present for safety. The rest is done automatically. There are already fully automated transits, and I suspect it is unions and legitimate safety concerns stopping full automation. But, it could be done with some work I think.
• Software development. I mean, currently the AI prediction in Visual Studio is sometimes scarily good. It DOES need to be guided by someone that can recognise when it gets it wrong. But so often development of a function now is writing 2 lines and auto completing half of the rest of the lines from the "AI". It's really a task of improving LLM and tying in LLM to product specific knowledge. Our days are most certainly numbered I think.
• Software design. This is similar to the above. With a good LLM (or General AI) loaded with good product knowledge, you might only need a few people to maintain/rework requirements into a format they can work with and feed-back mistakes until they get a sensible result. Each time reducing the likelihood that mistake will happen again. We'll need less for sure.
• I think a lot of the more basic functions of a nurse might well become tasks for some form of robotic AI companion for fully trained nurses/doctors. Maybe this is a bit further away
• Airline pilots could probably already be replaced, and it's purely on the safety grounds that I'm glad they're not. Generally once a route is programmed the pilots on a flight that goes well, will drive the plane to the runway, the plane will automatically set thrust for economic take-off. Once established in the air autopilot will pretty much take them to their destination. Pilots can then switch modes, and the autopilot for an equipped airport can take the plane to a safe landing. Although in practice, pilots usually take control back around 500 feet from the ground, I think. It's not really many steps that need automating. I feel like, at least one pilot will be retained for safety reasons. For the reasons for certain high profile incidents, there's an argument to keep 2 forever. But, in terms of could they be replaced? Yes, totally.
• Salespersons. Honestly, the way algorithms trick people into buying things they don't need. I'd argue they've already been replaced and businesses just still employ real sales people because they feel they need to :P
• Cleaners (domestic and street/commercial) could potentially be replaced by robotic versions. At the very least, the number of real people needed could be drastically reduced to supervisors of a robotic team.
• Retail workers. There's already the automated McDonald's isn't there? I also think the fact commercial property in large cities is becoming less occupied is a sign that as a whole, we're moving away from high-street retail and more online or specialist. As such, while we'll always probably need some real people here, the numbers will be much lower.

Now, when it comes to industrial and farm work. There's a LOT that is already semi-automated. One person can do the job with tech that might have taken 10 or more now. I can see this improving and if we ever pull of a more generalised AI approach, more entire roles could be eliminated.

My main point is, we're already at the point where the number of jobs that need people are considerably less than they used to be, this trend will continue. We know we cannot trust the free market and business in general to be ethical about this. So we should expect a large surplus of people with no real chance of gainful employment.

How we deal with that is important. Do we keep capitalism and go with a UBI and allow people to pursue their passions to top that up? Do we have some kind of inverse lottery for the jobs that do need doing? Where people perhaps take a 3 month block of 3 day working weeks to fill some of the positions that are needed? I'm not sure. I suspect we're going to go through at least a short period of "dark age" where the rich get MUCH richer, and everyone else gets screwed over before something is done about the problem.

Looks to me like Gates is looking ahead at this.

Sorry if that wall of text sounds pessimistic. Just one way I can see things going.