Mailbag: An AI take on AI-proofing your job

Plus what if Romney won? What if I'm wrong about Schumer? What if we brought back giant puppets?

I know a lot of people are fired-up this week, and I want to once again say that everyone who is mad as hell and wants to fight harder should strongly consider giving money to Susan Crawford’s race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Early voting has already started; Election Day is April 1.

This is an important race for abortion rights in Wisconsin, but also has national implications because of the gerrymandering of Wisconsin congressional maps.

Beyond that, it has national implications because of Elon Musk, who has put millions of dollars into trying to beat Crawford. In the Trump era thus far, Democrats’ larger base of small donors has tended to give them a financial edge in these low-profile but highly strategic races. That is no longer the case, thanks to Musk. But don’t just give money — communicate with your friends. There are clearly lots of people who are upset about the current course of things, but there is genuinely no better way to fight back than to win actual elections.

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Grace: Inspired in part by your column on AI job loss this past week: I along with many of my colleagues are currently contemplating career pivots due to everything (gestures broadly) happening in the federal government. I'm concerned about the possibility of pivoting in a new direction only for that to be wiped out in a few years by AI. Taking aside any particularities related to me, and speaking only in generalities, what do you think are the highly educated/white collar/desk job fields that will be most immune to the type of AI job loss you discussed?

I don’t know that I have a particularly great answer to this, other than to say that my best advice is to learn to use AI tools and then think about what the proximate limits of those tools are and what you could do with more powerful versions.

That said, Claude has a more specific list:

• Jobs requiring complex human interaction and emotional intelligence

  • Mental health professionals (therapists, counselors)

  • Education leadership and specialized teaching

  • Healthcare providers with significant bedside manner components

  • Conflict resolution specialists and mediators

• Roles requiring novel physical manipulation or real-world judgment

  • Specialized surgeons and medical specialists

  • Occupational and physical therapists

  • High-end skilled trades requiring physical dexterity with judgment

• Strategic decision-making with high stakes

  • Senior policy advisors and diplomats

  • High-level legal strategists (especially in novel areas of law)

  • Crisis management leadership

  • Scientific research direction and breakthrough innovation

• Interdisciplinary fields requiring unusual combinations of knowledge

  • Bioethics specialists

  • Environmental policy experts with scientific backgrounds

  • Technology-law-ethics intersection specialists

  • Systems design across multiple domains

• Fields where human trust and relationship is central

  • Specialized wealth management for high-net-worth clients

  • Certain types of executive coaching

  • Specialized sales requiring deep relationship building

I guess I also think of political punditry as exhibiting some of these characteristics. There’s a lot of facts and information and arguments that make up Slow Boring, but it is fundamentally about the relationship that I have with you all and vice versa.

Dara: Are the questions getting too damn long?

There’s something to this!

lwdlyndale: Do you think AOC will challenge Schumer in a primary, and if so what do you think will happen?