Your Future of Work Guide: 7 Jobs Generative AI Will Eliminate in The Next 5 Years
Today’s Most Accessible Jobs Will Disappear Faster than Thanos’ Snaps
The time — December 2022. I was minding my own business surfing the Internet when I suddenly came across “ChatGPT” as a trending hashtag on Twitter. I paid it no mind because I naively didn’t even know what the term stood for. Fast forward to the end of Q1 2023 and “ChatGPT” and “Generative AI” are the new it-girls of the tech industry — while hundreds of thousands of more tech workers continue to lose their jobs since last year. Every unemployed and underemployed individual right now is about to go through or is in the middle of an existential crisis, trying to fathom the type of work that they really should be doing in the world and the type of environment that will afford them the support and freedom to achieve such work. I think everyone should keep in mind how disruptive generative AI tools such as ChatGPT-4 will have on the future of work, even the lucky employed folks who are rage applying like crazy and don’t want to admit that they are probably on the inevitable chopping block as well. From this moment forward, each one of us is obsolete. Outdated. Used goods. Disposed of after being invited to a peculiar Zoom call.
We still have alternatives. Many of us are following the entrepreneurship route after years in corporate. Some will have more “pandemic gap years” traveling the world to find their life purpose and reclaim their mental health. Many of us have “stable” employment, while planning out their next lateral career moves during an impending recession. Just remember that we have now entered the Age of Generative AI and we all must play catch up.
AI automation has been around for at least 10 years. Every time you try to outmaneuver an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) so that an actual person can read your job application, you are dancing with AI. Every time you ask Alexa to tell you that the weather is, you’re interacting with AI. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but have you wondered why there has been an explosion of new generative AI tools during the same time millions in this country are unable to find decent jobs that compensate well above inflation and that more major investment banks are in ‘fiscal cardiac arrest’ since the Great Recession? I’ve accepted the fact that in this new era, the brands that we have all known to love and respect will utilize generative AI technologies to keep their bottom lines lean and agile by curtailing further production and operation costs — all at the expense of human labor and perhaps innovation. Their actions will then usher in a new generation of jobs (I’ll talk about this in Part II of this series) that most of us don’t even have the specialized knowledge and expertise to perform the work. Let me guess, you don’t believe me? Let’s walk a trip down memory lane, shall we?
The Back Story
Last year, I officially started my big data journey as a Microsoft contractor aka Program Manager on the SKI Engineering Team within the company’s Office Suite division. In about 5 months, I received a crash course in Natural Language Processing (NLP), content moderation, Ethical AI, and machine translation without any prior experience. Before Microsoft, I was just your average writer with ideal dreams of having a very successful career in tech. In late 2020, I read about the sudden departure of Dr. Timnit Gebru as co-head of Google’s famed Ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) team on Twitter. She spoke vocally and publicly of her grievances against the tech industry’s lack of diversity and inclusion efforts, technical documentation, supervision, and awareness of the economic and environmental costs of feeding large language models (LLMs) immense amounts of data without understanding the potential consequences.
Dr. Gebru is now the founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research (DAIR) Institute and is continuing the fight for global AI ethics reform. She wasn’t the first person to point out this AI crisis, but she has been the most vocal about the consequences humanity will endure if there isn’t an all-inclusive check and balance in place to validate the information these language models are consuming by the nanosecond. I like to think that her departure foretold the sudden proliferation of these new AI technologies into the digital stratosphere. For years, we have willingly and unwillingly granted social media companies and government entities our customer data and they in return, have weaponized that information for their own financial, cultural, and geopolitical motives. The same will happen the more users feed ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AI tools their images, questions, and scripts without us knowing the full extent of our actions for future generations until it’s too late.
I’m not saying that we will get to Skynet levels anytime soon. I’m also not saying that AI is inherently bad as I’ve benefited from using AI as a job applicant to a certain extent. But it scares me that AI ethicists will have an uphill battle on their hands to fight for proper regulatory oversight and will probably be treated as secondary NPC characters in a video game. If data scientists are not trained early on how to migrate systematic bias as they expand these new models, it will be even harder later to reverse the aftereffects that these models could have on our communities.
Similarly, I like to think an AI model is a living organism that needs all the love and care to grow organically in a world that it doesn’t know how to navigate in. Ignoring all the major red flags while feeding it biased content and advanced calculations will cloud its judgment about past events and the validity of the truth. It’s super hard to shift people’s mindsets to a completely new set of tenets after growing up in communities with very rigid belief systems. I would assume it is the same with artificial intelligence.
And like AI models, it’s also hard to educate corporations that patience is a virtue when time and market competition are standard currencies. Reversing the consequential damage AI-backed products have had on the environment would potentially mean the dissolution of business models and international reputations as we know it. Corporations would have to discontinue affected products and services and start from scratch, if they have the liquidity and momentum to do so. More tech workers would be laid off because they would no longer work on those discontinued products and hundreds of billions in revenue would be lost by the waste side. I hope it’s a risk worth fighting for.
The List
It took me some time to write this blog post because I had a multitude of content I didn’t know where to start with. It wasn’t until I saw a recent Tiktok video on the new Microsoft 365 CoPilot AI system that I nearly had a “That’s So Raven” flashback right before I started the drafting process. Microsoft 365 CoPilot alone will allow you to automate documents, presentations, and spreadsheets with prior data in mere seconds. As a long-term Microsoft Office user, this will potentially make us more effective and organized members of society, but I couldn’t help but wonder once this tool is officially out in the market, do we expect large companies to hire more external candidates with immediate experience in Excel, for example, when they could easily get existing workers up to speed on the new OpenAI integration?
Will placing Microsoft Office Suite products on your resume be a thing of the past if CoPilot will handle all the heavy calculations for us mere humans? I thought long and hard about this list because the limitless possibilities of all jobs being affected by mature generative AI tools can disrupt how we walk up in the morning to start our days.
Overall, the good news is that I think CoPilot could potentially make future workers more productive and efficient with their time and energy. The bad news is that it could make future workers lazier and less creative at coming up with solutions if AI is going to perform the bulk of the work. You may or may not agree with some, if not all the jobs on this list, but hear where I’m coming from:
1. Executive Assistants/Administrative Assistants/Office Managers
If you’re still applying to these types of jobs right now, I would take your transferable skills elsewhere and pivot into jobs with more lateral, long-term opportunities and better compensation (Account Manager and Customer Success Manager to name a few). When CoPilot launches, I see companies either having one designated person or a small internal team of Admins in charge of the meeting minutes, memos, phone calls, correspondence, memoranda, status reports, and other written internal documentation. Hell, this tool might even drop the middleman altogether and pressure more business owners and/or senior executives to become the content creators themselves because creating the appropriate documentation directly affects how senior management conducts business with different stakeholders daily. #BizOps managers and Chief of Staffs also fall into this category and are somewhat safe, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their job responsibilities become less administrative and more data-driven and strategic in due time.
2. College and Grad School Interns
Hear me out. The U.S. education system was designed to be broken and unequal across race, socioeconomic, geographical, gender, and class lines. If businesses wield generative AI tools to perform their most fundamental tasks and responsibilities that most interns are assigned to do such as data entry, data analysis, and financial modeling, do we expect large corporations with top summer associate and analyst programs and multi-year rotational programs to hire thousands of young, super ambitious professionals each year anymore? No. I predict that fewer intern slots will be made available to college and graduate school candidates, especially students with liberal arts and/or corporate finance/investment banking backgrounds.
Early career professionals will face even more competition for networking and career opportunities, which means that an American education system overhaul is needed to take place in the coming years so that these students are trained on specialized and emotional intelligence skillsets that can’t easily be automated. Companies will expect candidates to possess the technical skills coming in and training and onboarding budgets will be scaled and reduced to accommodate the smaller cohort pools. Generation Z and Generation Alpha (the babies!) coming up will have to supplement their education (unless the education system is overhauled) with side businesses and independent projects to keep themselves afloat because I generally believe that the competition for the crème de la crème is going to be astronomically stiff, with underrepresented candidates finding it even harder to break into certain positions and industries.
The corporate apprenticeship programs that Baby Boomers and Generation X were able to get into during their beginning of their careers are not coming back. Most companies nowadays don’t want to train you if they hire you; they expect you to be ready to go for anything on Day #1.
3. Generalists
If you decide this moment forward to work for a company, whether it’s in an on-site, hybrid, or remote capacity, you must present yourself to hiring managers and recruiters as a “specialized professional” who is the best person to solve their prospective employer’s organizational or product issue(s). Once you get your foot into the door, however, I would recommend that you morph into what I call a “generalized intra-entrepreneur”. Let me explain.
Let’s say that you’re a software developer who is a Python expert and can navigate the various Python libraries like Jupiter blindfolded. You may also have a public speaking talent and become known throughout your new company as the “paid” Program Director of a successful internal career development program that conducts live fire-side chats with leading women engineers and women startup founders on social media and in-person. Let’s say that three years in, your company lays off your entire department due to looming recession rumors.
If software engineering as a discipline ceases to exist because generative AI technologies by that time are doing all the coding and maintenance, then you can tell your next interviewers that yes you were a coder, but you also scaled an internal program that increased the number of women engineer employees at your previous company by 28% your last year there. HR barely wants to hire generalists anymore, but if you want to pivot to another industry or job function, you must be able to pivot fast or your application will be placed on the back burner. What I’m trying to say is that unfortunately, if you really want to have a thriving career in a world where many companies are more willing to invest in AI automation products and cheaper labor than you, upskilling should be your #1 go-to job strategy.
In today’s world, ghost jobs are about as common as there are TikTok users and HR is less likely to take a gamble on most career changers unless you are lucky enough to find referrals (that’s debatable but that’s a story for another day) or can bulldoze your way into their peripheral with the right (transferable) skills that they’re looking for.
4. Presentation and Graphic Designers/Illustrators/3D Artists
I’m aware that major banks hire presentation designers on both a full-time and contractual basis to generate simplistic yet formal decks that speak to their brands and can entice major prospects and sponsors into buying their products and services. If CoPilot can help us design personalized PowerPoint decks using our own script requirements, businesses don’t need to hire presentation designers anymore. They just need a small team to do the work or force every employee who is going to present data to internal and external clients to make their own decks. 3D artists and illustrators are also in for a very rude awakening once Mind Journey and other alternative AI imaging programs have matured. Do you think major film and production companies will need to hire external agencies to work on CGI animation for a new multi-million movie blockbuster franchise when they can manifest the design work in-house? For all the artists and creatives reading this, protect your intellectual property rights at all costs because I see an unwinnable war with the big boys ahead.
5. Public Relations/Communications/Social Media Managers
Small business owners and social media influencers will be safe in the meantime because producing quality innovative content will be expected from this subgroup, since the generative AI will allow them to catch up and compete with the industry giants. Yet, this will place even more pressure for them to also produce the strategy and analytics around the content, which can potentially generate more leads, customers, product revenue, and brand awareness if they take this opportunity seriously.
We should expect small communication and marketing teams at medium-sized businesses, marketing agencies, and large corporations streamlining AI-generated social media content. All you need nowadays is one person to use ChatGPT and Grammarly (another generative AI tool) to generate and proofread the social media content, then copy and paste that content over to an editorial calendar or folder that archives all the social media content for that particular team or company, and then finally copy and paste that information over to Hootsuite, SproutSocial, or any other social media management tool to schedule the content out on your social media platform(s). I already see the robotic AI-generated tweets, but the level of frequency of this content will be felt across the entire social media spectrum. Does your team need to develop a press release for a new product launch or to convey to the public that you’re about to announce more layoffs in the following months? Viola — ChatGPT-4, Bard, and Microsoft 365 CoPilot to the rescue!
6. Human Resources/Talent Acquisition/Human Capital Management Professionals
HR roles will eventually be eliminated unless AI can purposely interview candidates and rate their responses accurately without human intervention. Until then, the hiring process still needs a human touch. (Sidebar: I may have to take that last comment back because we already have generative AI in mobile devices already setting up phone calls by copying our voices). I’m confident though that the number of recruiters and sourcers finding candidates to initiate the application process will plummet substantially, especially when ATS systems already determine which candidates receive initial phone calls with recruiters.
Since LinkedIn is now owned by Microsoft, which has access to OpenAI’s Chat-GPT’s infrastructure, I would not be surprised that by the end of 2024, LinkedIn will launch a revamped subscription service model that will include new generative AI features or browser plugins. The Recruiter package will house this new licensed technology and LinkedIn will only allow a selected HR team per company because it will only take a few individuals to handle the AI’s web crawling efforts. The technology will scout potential candidates’ data across LinkedIn (and maybe other popular job search websites and social media forums) using criteria such as employer names, current skills, current and prior job titles, current job status, and job flexibility preferences. Then, the technology will report back to each client with comprehensive reports on eligible candidates and their profiles. Long live the days when recruiters spent half their days connecting and communicating with potential candidates via LinkedIn and phone.
The only thing that may stop this from happening is the current WorkDay lawsuit because this case has the potential to transform the legal field and the tech industry’s entire HR lifecycle process moving forward if it can be proven without a shadow of a doubt that AI SaaS tools like WorkDay have intentionally filter out underrepresented candidates from the application process. We all know this is true and it has been very well-documented over the years. That LinkedIn AI model that I just thought about out of thin air would most likely be biased because the training data that would be used to develop the software will most likely be biased as well. Companies will then soon find out that they might not need as many HR professionals as before.
7. Teachers/Educators
ChatGPT has opened Pandora’s box so wide in this industry that I fear that if you don’t overhaul the whole system, future generations will not have the critical thinking skills to outsmart any AI model. I see it now: 16 years old students prompting ChatGPT to complete their English essays, AP Calculus problem sets, college admissions essays, and science projects. As TikTok personality LegalBaddie further explained, we must modernize the U.S. education system so that critical-thinking and collaboration skills are more valued than memorization. Otherwise, educators will have another war on their hands preventing more students from cheating their way to higher education and professional circles.
Generation Z is very equipped with utilizing the most modern social media and mobile technologies, but the pedagogue has to edict them how to become more technical, forward-thinking, and mentally stimulated to prepare themselves for adulthood. First and foremost, teachers, professors, and other educators must be paid a living wage/salary to pivot because this line of work is not charity work. Secondly, they must create comprehensive and adaptable curriculums that permits them to be 10 steps ahead of their students and generative AI to avoid being obsolete and unemployed, sadly. Ban ChatGPT in schools and these kids will find a similar tool and another loophole.
Generation Alpha will be the first legitimate generative AI adopters and an unequal education system won’t accommodate their needs because they will feel like they don’t need adults to nurture their minds when they have Alexa or ChatGPT guiding them through life. There will also be a smaller demand for college admission essay writers, unless it’s in a capacity to help future college students evaluate and determine the best and most affordable two-year and/or four-year institutions to apply to. College and graduate school admissions teams that usually spot liars and plagiarizers in applicant pools like they are John Wick will only survive this shitstorm if they can also identify ChatGPT prompt patterns in AI-generated applications.
What if higher education ignores this new phenomenon? Well, many colleges and universities made the SAT optional, so they will have to find other creative ways to evaluate students’ future academic performance. But that requires time and money that I don’t think most academic institutions have in their budgets. If you think the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal was controversial, imagine the underhandedness that may happen if we add AI models into the mix? The original gatekeepers of consumer data have enough on their plates with decreased admissions rates and high tuition rates year after year. They have more work on their hands than I initially realized.
Conclusion
These are just some jobs that I think will be a thing of the past in the next couple of years. Just know that no job is safe right now. Everyone must adopt a business “person of one” mindset or you’ll be in this infinity loop every time you’re about to face another layoff or unexpected job situation. You can’t let companies dictate how you should spend your days working anymore with your mental health is on the line. Reclaim your power. You must come into every new work situation moving forward with contingency plans in mind. You mean business now!
