In search of relevance

With the ingress and proliferation of AI, we need to think hard about  career choices that our kids need to make. Actually, why just our kids? We need to stay relevant too, so long as we are alive, so reinventing ourselves constantly is a necessity. 

So instead of calling it a career choice, we can simply call it staying relevant. 

There was a time when becoming an SAP consultant was all the rage. This was in the late 90's, ERP had just been discovered, and "ERP" consultants were in high demand. I was in Hyderabad those days, and I remember this building in Ameerpet, which  had probably twenty or more SAP / ERP "institutes". Not even one of the kids enrolling in those classes could string two words together in English to make a proper sentence, but they all landed up in the US. A visit to Chilkur Balaji temple would virtually guarantee them the visa! 

What does an SAP consultant do? They just "configure" the package, after understanding the "process" of the company and map the software on to the process. Which is pretty low end stuff, but in the late 90's, anyone who claimed they knew SAP was in the next plane to the US, with a hundred thousand dollars salary. You heard me right, that is the equivalent of two hundred thousand dollars of today's money, for kids who had nothing much to boast of except imaginative CV's, which by the way is reputed to be a Hyderabad speciality. 

Life is not so simple anymore. In just 25 years, we can't recognise the landscape around us. 

AI can read CAT scans better than most radiologists, draft legal documents better than most lawyers, make music... It sucks at writing poetry, but just wait for a few more years, all the poetasters who fancy themselves as poets are going to give up writing poetry because AI will be doing it better. 

In such a situation, how does one stay relevant? That's the big question. 

There are few different ways you can look at this problem.

If you are absolutely brilliant, or to use a trumpian term, brilliantest, type then dive right into software, programming, AI, etc. and remain on the cutting edge of the field. You will have to reeducate and reinvent yourself every three years or so, probably junking everything you have learnt till then. 

If you are the average middle of the road person with an average intellect and an abysmal attention span, which means if you are like most people, take your chances and join a BPO. The problem is, your job may not last for long. AI will take over most of what you do, and the youngsters coming out of college will elbow you out of whatever jobs are left. 

If both of these options sound scary, choose a field that will not be taken over by AI. 

Before we get into that, the first thing you should not choose isv one of the so called liberal arts courses. It's a fashion being imported here from US universities, and for the life of me I can't figure out how studying some of those courses are teaching anyone anything. 

Study basic maths, basic statistics, basic physics. They will never go out of fashion. 

Get into children's education. Or into the field of geriatric care. Become a primary school teacher or a nurse.  These needs will keep on increasing and AI can't take over. 

Get into a career that involves close interactions with people on a day to day basis, where AI can't threaten you. Become a barber or a cook. 

Become a therapist or a counsellor.  That whole field is a bit of a scam, but more and more people are going to need therapy, either because they can't cope with the pace of change around them, or because they are just lonely, or because going to a therapist is the emerging fashion. 

Please let me know your thoughts, and ideas for further career options, or to put it better, options for staying relevant.