They definitely know how to make customers happy, something EA never understood, but I’m old enough to remember a different time. Valve used to be horrible 15 years ago. They’d sell you broken games with no return system. They’d straight up delete games out of your library with no recourse, amounting to outright theft. The EU rolled out regulations targeting Steam’s shady practices. They’ve been okay since.

A teacher needs to motivate people and be a mentor

Technically that's the parents' job as much as the teachers'. Just need to push for parents to shoulder more of the load. And who says we won't have a specialized motivator/mentor AI in a year or two?

understand kids’ reasoning and not display basic facts. We already had books for that.

But even a simple chatbot like ChatGPT is very reactive and can pretend very well to understand reasoning, just like a teacher. And every student can ask their chatbot for help at the same time. Personally, I'm from a small town in Estonia - I can tell you that when I went to school, I had multiple teachers who for sure would've been inferior to 2022 ChatGPT, let alone 2026 ChatGPT or Claude. We just didn't have better teachers available in this shithole. I've had an English teacher that didn't speak English (she was actually a history teacher and a poor one at that, they just didn't have a real English teacher to assign to us that year), an Estonian teacher that didn't really understand Estonian... IN ESTONIA. I have no idea where they dug her up from. And over the years, I think at least two IT teachers who barely knew how to use a computer. One of the German teachers and one of the History teachers also couldn't stop telling their personal stories. Learned nothing in either of those subjects that year. Luckily most of those horrible teachers only ended up teaching my class for one year at some point or another.

Actually the most valuable thing about school that technology can't replace is the physical building itself containing the students. Just having a bunch of other kids your age, who are also going through what you're going through. That's worth more than any teacher, as we learned during COVID when kids were deprived of it.

AI is still very bad at solving the complex issues that doctors solve

AI is still very bad at solving the complex issues that software engineers solve. Yet junior engineers are no longer finding jobs.

It can’t do a physical examination

Yes, that's what I'm saying, there will be people whose job is nothing more than to do things like that, to provide the data. Then AI can guesstimate shit, and the doctor's job will be just to verify that the AI didn't fuck up. There's no need to pay a great doctor that can talk to the patient, do a physical, come up with a diagnosis and solutions if you can just pay a mediocre one that just takes liability for the AI if it fucks up. You can also pay far fewer doctors. Of course there will be radiology techs, physical examination givers (might literally become a low wage job of its own to fill out standardized tests). Etc. But you'll just have one or two specialized employees per task, rather than someone who needs a multi year degree and needs to know everything about the human body.

not everything is based on hard verifiable data, but also experience.

Good news then, because AI is literally 100% experience, 0% hard verifiable data. Chances are you're adding to some future AI's experience every time you fill something out on your EMR. Especially if it connects e.g radiology data to your notes.

And nurses? I mean, you can think of that one for yourself.

I already said they'll still exist, but their job will be a physical interface between the AI system and the patients, more than anything. Maybe this'll take 10 years rather than 2, but it'll happen.

Yes a lot of jobs are at risk. Not all are equally at risk though and “mostly worthless” is a looooong stretch.

The ones least at risk are, like I said, low-paid physical jobs. Also any high-end executives. CEOs do nothing of real value, but they won't be replaced by AI because they're friends with the directors. Parliament/congress will still be around. Of course in my country they're talking about using AI to legislate as well. Or perhaps they've already started. We're fucking doomed, yay.

Safest bet in 2026 is actually trades, because that gets you a job where you still need knowledge and experience is worth something, but you also have to be present physically. Automating a plumber or electrician is harder than automating a doctor or an engineer, that's just how it is with modern AI. But with how many people are now unemployed, those jobs will also start paying a lot less than they used to.

Remember, for any job, it doesn't REALLY matter if the AI can do it well, only how well it can be sold to the government, or company stakeholders, etc. If an AI can do 20% of a person's job and the person costs 10x more than the AI to employ... That person can be laid off and other employees will have to pick up the remaining 80%, for no extra pay of course.

At the end of the day, as long as we still need jobs to live, we're all fucked. There's going to be no real middle class under capitalism anymore. There's a war on many fronts and our jobs going away or getting enshittified is just one.

To be clear I don't think anyone's losing their existing job tomorrow. Doctor, teacher, engineer, lawyer, whatever. I think getting into any of these careers is going to be very difficult soon, the salaries for new hires in particular, but also everyone in general, will drop hard, and AI will replace humans gradually, and perhaps not completely. But all of these jobs are going to be streamlined, with AI doing most of the thinking for you, and the human being there for liability only.

Well shit, some countries might be having it even worse then. Here at least there are still plenty of openings for grocery stores, fast food restaurants and gas stations. Pay is shit, work is grueling, but they never stop hiring. My point really was that these are the jobs we'll have to start choosing from, as opposed to the jobs we want to do.

Those are not jobs that would give me any fulfillment whatsoever. What are the complex technical problems to solve in feeding someone? In moving them around? It's exactly the same as factory assembly line work. A monotonous grind with no end in sight, nothing gets "done" because there's a bunch more of the same every day until you retire.

I'm psychologically incapable of doing these types of jobs. Yes I'm medicated and no it doesn't help too much. I have crippling ADHD. I've done factory work before and like I said, it makes me want to off myself. This was the type of job we were supposed to let robots handle, not the ones where we actually get to use our brains.

I also don't see "bring you into contact with people" as a positive for a job in any way. I've found that any time I have to work with customers, they can be absolutely annoying idiots. Just hanging out with people I actually like is a completely different proposition. It's just that when people need something, they rarely know what they need and you have the options of either making them angry by suggesting they're wrong, or making them angry by letting them be wrong. To be clear, I don't consider myself immune to this. See me walk into an automotive paint store or a doctor's office and my questions and ideas are probably very stupid. But I make up for it by not arguing when I'm being corrected by the person that actually knows what they're doing.

Okay, that's great for everyone outside the US who aren't going to be losing their jobs to AI.

Not sure if that's much of a consolation to the literally millions of people in the US who are losing their jobs, or unable to even enter into the workforce.