There are still people who say that AI is not as intelligent as cats and dogs. Let's take a look at what the World Economic Forum has to say about this. What industries will become the trends of the future, and which ones will be eliminated? We will do a simple analysis, and at the end of the article, we will talk about some in-depth thoughts, which will be more heavy.
The graph "TOP FUTURE SKILLS" shows the changing trends of workplace skills in 2030.
How to interpret the graph?
Horizontal axis (left to right):
- Left side: skills decrease in importance (such as physical labor, basic skills).
- Right side: skills continue to be important (such as technology application, strategic thinking).
Vertical axis (bottom to top):
- The higher the value, the faster the skill demand grows (such as AI and data analysis).
Four skill distribution areas:
- Top right corner (high demand, high growth): such as "AI and data", "cyber security", "technology application", are the most critical areas in the future.
- Bottom right corner (high demand but slowing growth): such as "customer-oriented", "quality management", are still important but need to be deepened.
- Top left corner (high growth but declining demand): This area is more special, indicating that although some skills have increased demand in the short term (such as digital brand management), they may be replaced by new technologies in the long term, and we need to be wary of over-investment.
- Bottom left corner (low demand, low growth): such as "physical labor", "multilingual ability", will gradually be replaced by automation or tools.
Industries with significantly increased demand in the future (positive):
- AI and data science
- Network security and network technology
- Design and user experience (UX)
- Green economy and sustainable development
Industries with reduced demand for future skills (negative):
- Traditional manufacturing and repetitive labor (Manual Tasks)
- Basic coding and simple technical support (Coding Basics)
- Traditional brand and marketing growth (Digital Brand Growth)
Friends who are in industries with rising or falling demand can think about how to plan and deploy early.
Regarding the future impact of AI on humans, this topic is actually more heavy. The following are purely personal opinions, for reference only.
The technological changes since the Industrial Revolution, whether it is the steam engine or the computer, are essentially instrumental transformations of the way humans work. These changes have replaced physical labor through mechanization, optimized process efficiency through informatization, and while destroying old jobs, they can always create a larger employment ecosystem, and social human capital has always achieved structural upgrading. However, the breakthrough development of AI technology is pushing this 200-year-old technological reform to a new dimension.
The subversive nature of the AI revolution lies in its fundamental shift: from assisting humans in execution (Doing) to deeply replacing human thinking (Thinking).
When generative AI can independently complete the review of legal documents, when neural networks can independently diagnose medical images, and when large language models can fluently conduct cross-language business negotiations, the traditional advantages of humans in the cognitive field are facing systemic deconstruction.
What is more far-reaching is that AI is reshaping the evaluation system of workplace ability - the professional barriers based on experience accumulation are penetrated by algorithms, the decision-making authority relying on logical deduction is challenged by data models, and even creative work that requires decades of practice is facing the production capacity crushing of diffusion models. This phenomenon of ability equalization essentially constitutes a fundamental questioning of the human capital value assessment system.
The structural collapse of the job market has slowly begun. The AI labs of top technology companies are staging the "Matthew effect": a model trained by hundreds of algorithm engineers can replace the production capacity of ten thousand traditional engineers; an intelligent customer service system developed by a ten-person team can take over a call center with a scale of thousands of people. This new type of production combination of "a very small number of elites + massive computing power" is disintegrating the classic economic model of "employment opportunities increase linearly with technological progress". What is even more alarming is that when companies such as OpenAI continue to break through the exponential growth of model parameters, the replacement speed of human jobs may show non-linear acceleration characteristics.
AI is rewriting the underlying logic of the social contract, and we urgently need to redefine what is "irreplaceable human value".
I am not creating anxiety here, but we must honestly face a realistic proposition in the future. Regarding how to solve this problem, I don't have a definite answer at the moment, but continuous learning and continuous progress may be the only way we can take. If you are willing, you might as well follow me first, and I will regularly share AI underlying concepts, AI tool applications, and the latest AI information to accompany you to explore this challenging road.
