If you’re a web designer, you’ve been warned. Now there is an Artificial Intelligence that can do your job. Customers can direct exactly how their new website should look. Fancy something more colorful? You got it. Less quirky and more professional? Done. This A.I. is still in a limited beta but it is coming.
It’s called The Grid and it came out of nowhere. It makes you feel like you are interacting with a human counterpart. And it works. Today, A.I. researchers can mine a mountain of Internet usage data. In the past, technological leaps primarily sent blue-collar workers packing. Recent progress with artificial intelligence, however, has put a shocking amount of professional, salaried careers on the chopping block.
Studies show that almost every other thing professionals do on an average workday can already be automated by A.I. The BBC even predicted that nearly half of the most commonly held careers are above a 50 percent risk of automation before 2035.
What follows are 10 of the professions A.I. is already gearing up to take down. Is there a target on your forehead?
1. Web Designer/Web Developer
Tech that will replace it: The Grid
Maybe we expected computers to “get” other computers, but the A.I. behind The Grid will take designing, coding, re-designing, and re-coding (not to mention the re-re-designing) out of the hands of both web designers and web developers. Based on simple pointers, it can turn a business’ idea and a few photos into a marketing masterpiece, and it makes changes based on human feedback.
2. Online Marketer
Tech that will replace it: Persado
Persado has the potential to replace at least half of your PR department. It generates pitches for advertising campaigns and personalized messages to target individual clients and move them to action. With an A.I. that’s been taught everything there is to know about persuasion techniques, few could claim Persado’s approach is uninformed.
3. Office Manager
Tech that will replace it: Betty
A.I. is not only working in your office. Now it’s managing it. Betty is an intelligent bot currently on trial as office manager in England, but it appears to be highly functional and effective. She’s in charge of greeting guests and staff, tracking employees’ hours and overtime, and stocking office materials. Through unique and adaptive machine learning, she can keep a live “mental” map of the office, meaning she not only knows how to navigate the place independently, but also knows when someone has snatched a stapler from a coworker’s desk.
4. Accountant
Tech that will replace it: Smacc
Humans are no longer needed for crunching numbers, or punching them, for that matter. Smacc has fully automated the accounting process, and could potentially leave the United States’ 3 million accounting-related workers out of a job. Simply hand in your receipts, and the A.I. will handle prepare and examine all of your (or your business’) financial records.
5. HR Professional
Tech that will replace it: FlatPi
FlatPi is the ultimate headhunter. While the hiring process can be tedious and exhausting, the artificial intelligence in FlatPi will sift through and rank candidates in seconds. (FirstJob also recently released a chatbot named Mya that directly interacts with candidates, letting them know if their application is under review or just not going to cut it.)
6. Journalist
Tech that will replace it: Wordsmith
Breaking News: Your creativity is no longer needed! Major news outlets are already publishing articles written by A.I. programs like Wordsmith. A human writer’s work can require several stages of editing. Wordsmith can read through large amounts of data, pick out what’s interesting, and then spin a concise, effective report.
7. Editor
Tech that will replace it: Bold
Speaking of editing, why not lose the editor along with the journalists? Bold’s artificially intelligent assistants suggest revisions as you write to improve sentence structure, clarity, word choice, and more.
8. Lawyer
Tech that will replace it: Ross
I fought the law and the…bot won? Don’t bother worrying that your company will hire a robot, this one already has. Ross is a lawyer A.I. that is good for answering questions, doing research, and keeping up to date on recent cases that may be useful in helping yours.
9. Doctor
Tech that will replace it: Babylon
What’s up, doc? Babylon has its eyes on you too. It can understand simple language in order to diagnose symptoms as they arise. Then it goes one step further, keeping track of your general health in order to prevent illnesses in the future. It’s even got the British National Health Service taking it for a test run now.
10. Psychologist/Therapist
Tech that will replace it: Ellie
Ellie is an AI therapist that seems nearly emotionally aware. Using something similar to the Kinect sensor you use to play Just Dance, she reads clients’ body language and responds like a human would, doing things such as smiling, nodding, shrugging, etc. via her screen’s human avatar. And get this, people prefer opening up to her over her human rival.