Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been a favorite of popular culture. But this sci-fi concept is now finally starting to affect the real world. 

AI’s most profitable application today is shoving tons of personalized ads in your face. But it could soon be doing more useful things like driving cars or optimizing your home.

Let’s take a look at what we can do to prepare for this technology revolution.

Learn to talk to machines

The whole idea of AI is that it can allow machines to do tasks that require some degree of human intellect.

Any such task can then be done at a much lower cost and without all the HR complications related to a human workforce.

Those capable of effectively instructing this cheap and obedient machine workforce will gain the ability to get a lot more done.  

It can therefore pay to think though the tasks in your chosen profession that could be suitable for AI. This includes anything where decision-making follows cold logic applied to existing data.

Some first-hand experience with identifying AI-suitable tasks and attempting to implement an AI solution can therefore be very valuable. 

Is your job safe?

The potential downside of AI is the number of jobs that will be taken over by machines. Many people are very worried about this. 

The jobs most at risk are those involving plenty of repetition following a relatively simple algorithm. 

On the other hand, there are three distinct features of jobs that will be safe:

Complexity

Most professional jobs like engineers, doctors and lawyers should be safe because of their complexity. 

Any profession that requires many years of study to learn and decades of experience to master will be tough for AI to replicate. 

To remain competitive, however, professionals will need to learn to use AI for any repetitive or data processing tasks they might be dealing with.

Creativity

This includes typical right-brain activities like writers, graphic designers and musicians. 

The objective of these professions is to appeal to human emotions. It requires a lot of “feeling” that will be very tough to condense into a logical computer code. 

Human touch

These are jobs that require lots of emotional intelligence and empathy such as managers, HR professionals, and nurses.

Human behavior is characterized by a high level of irrationality that will be very tough for robots to manage. Jobs centered on keeping emotional humans happy are safe from automation. 

No more boring jobs!

Despite all the hype and the frequent use of the word “disruption” in articles about AI, changes to our daily lives are likely to be gradual. 

Getting AI to work properly on even slightly complex tasks is very difficult. The infiltration of AI into the job market could therefore be slower than most expect.  

AI works best in jobs that are very boring. Repetitive jobs that a human can learn to do in a day or two will go first. 

And this is certainly a good thing 🙂