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Train for what?

AI and other technologies are making many jobs redundant.

Latest "endangered career path" is computer programming, apparently.

The online world is full of stories about how lay-people are now using AI coding agents to create amazingly complex and capable bits of software with a suprisingly little amount of time and effort.

My own experimentation with coding agents suggests that while they're not perfect, they're also not bad, not bad at all.

Given the pace at which AI is evolving, I have no doubt that the traditional "computer programmer" as we've known them for many decades, is definitely an endangered species.

So what other job titles will soon be obliterated or massively reduced due to ever-improving technology?

There was once a time when, as someone in high school, you could pick your career path with confidence, knowing that the job you studied and trained for today would almost certainly still be around tomorrow.

Now there are no such guarantees.

Even once-safe trades and professions such as being a repairer of things is now "so last century" as we move from an era of repairing to replacing.

Good luck trying to find someone who can economically repair that 40-inch Veon TV you bought from The Warehouse three years ago. Given that you could buy a new one for $350, I doubt it would be even worth taking the back off a three year old unit to investigate any fault.

I have to feel a bit sorry for anyone who might have invested several years of their life in an apprenticeship to fix such things, now only to find that fixing isn't really as popular as it used to be; sometimes not even possible.

Let's not forget the poor musicians, graphic artists and photographers I've written about previously. They've pretty much been relegated to "also ran" by AI and its ability to churn out really professional results for a few dollars and in seconds.

With the predicted rise in humanoid robot capabilities, especially when coupled to AI systems, even manual trades and professions are now not the iron-clad career options they once were.

I see that car mechanics now only exist in back yards and history books. They've been replaced by "technicians" who charge four times as much and whose job it is to plug into the ODB2 connector then replace the parts that are reported as faulty, assuming those parts are available and affordable (increasingly unlikely).

Even the humble but once-essential rubbish/bin man has all but disappeared from our streets. On collection day there's just one guy who drives a truck with a hydraulic arm that lifts up the wheely-bin and dumps it into the compactor. No more young guys jogging shirtless alongside a truck and hurling bags or tipping bins into the back. Technology has decimated their ranks.

Unemployment levels are up, or so we're told. It's easy to see why and to be honest, I don't see the situation improving... ever.

Even front-line reception in many government departments and private businesses is being replaced by a computerised phone system with AI chatbot and a touch-screen-based system in the foyer.

It could be that we're headed for super-efficiency in business but a society where so few are employed that there are no customers for the goods and services on offer because everyone's on the dole.

Surely it's time we did some serious work to ensure that the structure of our society and the economy it relies on is determined by well-thought out planning and well-developed strategies. Or maybe that's always going to be the job of the *next* government.

Carpe Diem folks!

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