These Are the Jobs AI Will Replace

Question: Do you have a job that could be replaced by AI? OK, that was a trick question. Everyone’s job could be replaced by AI. That’s how they frightened CEOs into buying it. Better question: How do you know if your job will be replaced by AI? Let me answer that this way. There are two kinds of salespeople in this world. One kind is people who are good at selling and the other kind is people who are Salesforce Wizards. Similarly, there are two kinds of marketing people in this world. People who are good at marketing and HubSpot Gurus. You see where I’m going? To answer the question, we need to talk about the difference between expendable knowledge workers and irreplaceable knowledgeable workers. I’m Not Trying to Scare Anyone There’s actually a little bit of hope to talk about. For once. See, way back in the olden days—a.k.a., the summer of 2023—I predicted which jobs were most likely to be replaced by the coming Generative AI wave. TL;DR: I was one of the progenitors of early generative AI, in 2010, building a platform that enterprises like Yahoo and the Associated Press used to write insightful, informative narratives from nothing but raw data. Even back then, we knew that what we were doing would eliminate jobs. But everyone around us was confused as to which jobs our story-writing computers were going to eliminate. In 2010, we weren’t going to replace journalists or writers, at least not the good ones. Our tech was going to eliminate a new breed of “data scientists,” and only the sketchy ones. Those data scientists were knowledge workers. They knew how to use databases and SQL and R and Python to get insights out of the data. But it took the journalists, the knowledgeable workers, to make those insights make sense in context for the reader. I Was Right! Fast-forward to today and that battle is still going on. The threat has multiplied, of course, but not exponentially, because even today’s agentic AI is certainly not a font of unlimited contextual knowledge. What I learned back in 2010 and what still holds true today is that technical evolution has a way of calling out the rote-task knowledge workers in any industry. Back then, it was Johnny-come-lately data scientists. Today, it’s Salesforce Wizards and HubSpot Gurus. And AI does the calling out almost instantaneously, in a way that’s obvious when it’s not hallucinating. As I said in that 2023 article, it was only a matter of time before early-2023 generative AI was going to hit the knowledge economy, at which point, those rote-task knowledge workers should start worrying about their jobs. To clarify which jobs were in peril, I believe I used the phrase, “any white-collar, butt-in-a-seat, pixel-pushing, spreadsheet-spelunking job that the influx of data wrought on the workforce.” But even back in 2010, those jobs were starting to disappear, thanks to the automation that was and still is part and parcel of Big AI (or whatever). Those rote-task jobs were only being used as stepping stones to turn those knowledge workers into knowledgeable workers. In 2023, I said that most knowledge workers had about five to 10 years before they became obsolete. I Was Wrong! Well, we’re only in year three, maybe four, and corporate America seems hell-bent on eliminating the jobs of both knowledge workers and knowledgeable workers and letting God sort it out. That’s a huge problem. It has everything to do with how AI was sold into the enterprise, (i.e., FOMO), and that has been my problem with AI the whole time. In trying to reach maximum productivity, we just went all-in on the promise of AI and redefined productivity to meet it. However, as with most overreach cycles in business, I believe that’s finally changing. It might be too little and too late, but the AI bills are starting to come due. AI Hype Meets Financial Reality Even back in early 2024, obvious leaks in the AI productivity dream bucket started becoming very public. For example, this article from a fellow Inc. writer (go team!) digging into a survey from Upwork notes that 96 percent of C-suite executives expect AI to increase productivity, while 77 percent of employees actually using the tools as they exist today experienced decreased productivity. This isn’t a bright red warning flag or anything, but it does at least show the chasm-like mismatch in expectations versus reality that’s been snowballing over the last year. Now, in late 2023, I also said that AI was coming for SaaS, and everyone laughed at me again. Well, I was both right and wrong there too. I was right about AI replacing SaaS knowledge workers—those solely responsible for knowing how to get useful insights out of platforms like Google Analytics… or Salesforce or HubSpot. I was wrong in assuming corporate America would respond to this technical evolution sensibly and with caution and care for its employees. Boy, was I wrong. As I said, companies threw all kinds of babies out with all kinds of bathwater. To their own detriment. And here we are. We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet We’re not at the end of the AI hype cycle, but I believe we’re beyond peak AI hype. So the answer, the real answer for how to become irreplaceable, is the same and as simple as it ever was. Become a knowledgeable worker. Be unbeatable at what you do. Let AI handle the rote-task drudgery like staring at HubSpot all day. Because, yes, AI can come up with code or creative work or even make the hiring and firing decisions for you. It just can’t do it completely in context, and those skills which separate great coders and marketers and salespeople and CEOs are the same skills they always were. Look—it’s not how good you are at AI. It’s how good you are at everything that AI should not be doing. Which is a lot. OK. So now it’s just a matter of hiring back all those knowledgeable workers we lost—and are still losing—in the AI enterprise coup. Let’s hope our hiring system isn’t broken beyond all recognition. EXPERT OPINION BY JOE PROCOPIO, FOUNDER, JOEPROCOPIO.COM @JPROCO