Fields at Risk from AI

[rightofreag]

I have a kid who is a 2025. Interested in Math but not really into chem/bio/physics. He’s considering something along the lines of studying data science, quant analysis, econometrics. I’ve lately been thinking this might be the area most effected by the boom in AI. Any opinions on this? I personally think there is going to be a big recession over the next few years. The boom has been too big. The bust will have to mirror it.

[rightofreag]

2025, meaning the entry year into college

[tsbna44]

I think math oriented majors are always good and the super smart always find a way to reinvent.

But truth is no one knows. My job is a people in person job. We are staffed the same but no longer allowed to visit in person. We are supposed to zoom. The clients aren’t interested. Yet we are still here. I suspect the ranks of my job will thin. But I don’t know. A competitor announced yesterday a 10% staff reduction.

The point - there’s no way to know the future. But my guess is that people quantitatively oriented will always have a leg up.

I imagine there will be changed industries, reinvented industries, and new industries.

But no one truly knows.

[AustenNut]

Regarding fields at risk from AI, I first started looking up some previous CC threads on the topic that might help to provide an initial response.

Below are posts 52 & 53 from this thread about [ChatGPT and the Future of Colleges]
(ChatGPT and the Future of Colleges) that might be helpful:

@cquin85

Here’s a short piece (maybe written by AI) that provides a more fulsome list:

ChatGPT: the 10 Jobs Most at Risk of Being Replaced by AI

For those who don’t like to click, the following are listed as vulnerable:

• Tech (coders, programmers, software engineers and data analysts)
• Media (advertising, content creation, tech writing and journalism)
• Legal (paralegals and legal assistants)
• Market research analysts
• Teachers
• Finance (analysts and personal financial advisors)
• Traders
• Graphic designers
• Accountants
• Customer service agents

My zone is heavy on accountants, finance people, lawyers and paralegals. If I were to rank order the risk, I would put accounting at or near the top. We’ve already written several bots that eliminate X number of FTEs, and we’re not close to doing anything like that in the other functions. There is A LOT of low hanging fruit in the accounting profession in my opinion. The Big 4 employ people at six figure salaries to work on audit teams who, at the more junior levels, get paid to do pretty low level work. The mid- to more senior level managers aren’t immune either. Especially given their reliance on data sampling, it is not inconceivable that the entire audit staff can be AI’d at some point, though the government will have to say that’s OK before it can happen. There will certainly be corporate pressure because nobody likes paying the auditors. Finance and the paralegals are a little less clear to me, but I can see some room for AI there. Lawyers are little further off IMO because starting pretty early on in one’s career judgment is involved. But no doubt there are legal functions that can be AI’d.

@1NJParent

I’ll repost what I posted in another thread. The impact of AI on various industries/professions according to a recent Goldman report:

This thread also starts off with an article from the Wall Street Journal about AI’s impact on programmers: WSJ: What Will AI Do to Your Job? Take a Look at What It’s Already Doing to Coders

In the first Business Insider article quoted by @cquin85, data analysts was in the first batch of jobs listed as vulnerable, and market research analysts and finance analysts are also listed further down.

Now, what I found elsewhere will be shared in my next post…

[AustenNut]

Last month the NY Times produced this report (gifted link):

In Reversal Because of A.I., Office Jobs Are Now More at Risk

White-collar workers are much more vulnerable to reductions from AI than blue-collar workers, particularly more entry-level white collar workers. (Of course, how do you get more senior white collar workers without first having entry-level ones…) There are suspicions that jobs may not go away entirely, but because of the AI assistance, that fewer people will be needed.

@tsbna44

I think math oriented majors are always good

But according to both ChatGPT and human researchers…(emphasis added)

The researchers asked an advanced model of ChatGPT to analyze the O*Net data and determine which tasks large language models could do. It found that 86 jobs were entirely exposed (meaning every task could be assisted by the tool). The human researchers said 15 jobs were. The job that both the humans and the A.I. agreed was most exposed was mathematician.

So STEM is not necessarily the answer if one wants total job safety. (Not that there won’t be safe STEM jobs, but STEM fields in and of themselves are not going to be immune from AI’s effects.)

[tsbna44]

I don’t know about job safety - because all fields are at risk in life - but I think quantitatively oriented skills are always in demand relative to non-quantitative skills.

It’s a data world and as I said and we’ve seen many times in our lifetimes - when something disappears, something else appears.

And typically those with analytical skillsets are at an advantage.

But the thing about the future is - we don’t know - and that’s what makes life exciting.

[ucbalumnus]

@tsbna44

we’ve seen many times in our lifetimes - when something disappears, something else appears.

However, as old jobs disappear and new jobs appear, the new jobs today are likely to require more skills and education than the new jobs of a generation ago. I.e. each generation has faced a more costly and difficult retraining for those wanting to change from a disappearing job category to a newly appearing job category.