Will robots take our children's jobs? [View all]

[FakeNoose]

Link: https://nyti.ms/2jLR9Ts

New York Times / Style Section / Dec. 11, 2017
By: Alex Williams

Like a lot of children, my sons, Toby, 7, and Anton, 4, are obsessed with robots. In the children’s books they
devour at bedtime, happy, helpful robots pop up more often than even dragons or dinosaurs. The other day I
asked Toby why children like robots so much. “Because they work for you,” he said.

What I didn’t have the heart to tell him is, someday he might work for them — or, I fear, might not work
at all, because of them.

It is not just Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking who are freaking out about the rise of
invincible machines. Yes, robots have the potential to outsmart us and destroy the human race. But first,
artificial intelligence could make countless professions obsolete by the time my sons reach their 20s.
You do not exactly need to be Marty McFly to see the obvious threats to our children’s future careers.
Say you dream of sending your daughter off to Yale School of Medicine to become a radiologist. And why
not? Radiologists in New York typically earn about $470,000, according to Salary.com.

But that job is suddenly looking iffy as A.I. gets better at reading scans. A start-up called Arterys, to cite just
one example, already has a program that can perform a magnetic-resonance imaging analysis of blood flow
through a heart in just 15 seconds, compared with the 45 minutes required by humans.

Long read, but well-researched and thought provoking article in which the author discusses the future automation of many professions and career choices of today's youngsters. It's kind of scary and it's happening now.