Jobs of the future, Part Two: the Counsellor

I wonder whether, tomorrow, we will find machines that advise us on our life decisions, our relationships and our thinking. It is obvious that AI machines will manage our health and deploy robotic healthcare services to ensure that we live our lives better, but what about what is inside our heart and mind?

I used to think that this would be an impossible area for AI and robotics to intervene, but have recently changed my mind (again). Machines can often give better health advice than doctors:

• ChatGPT Rated as Better Than Real Doctors for Empathy, Advice
• The AI will see you now: ChatGPT provides higher quality answers and is more empathetic than a real doctor, study finds
• Is AI Better Than A Doctor? ChatGPT Outperforms Physicians In Compassion And Quality Of Advice

… or can it?

Meanwhile, my brother is getting frustrated with the needs of my mother as she reaches end-of-life. He and his wife are her full-time carers, and mum is very demanding. Her main needs seem to be regulator updates of medicines, drinks and food. That’s where the AI robots can help out. They can give her empathy, tablets, food and drink on demand with zero argument or complaint … unlike my brother. Added to which they could walk her dog.

This is the vision of Tesla, Nvidia and more. Ex Machina is not far away. Elon Musk, on launching the Optimus robot recently states that it can serve you drinks and walk your dog. Talking of humanoid robots Rev Lebaredian, VP of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at Nvidia, believes that technological advancements have already made humanoid robots feasible today. But then he qualifies that it is the additional layer of AI that will accelerate their usefulness.

It is things like the challenges of a robot’s ability to balance, walk and navigate, Lebaredian notes that: “It’s only recently, because of these advances in AI and computing, we actually see a line of sight to solving all of them.”

An AI-powered ‘brain’, which Lebaredian described as the, “missing ingredient for creating a useful general purpose robot,” together with the ability to learn from simulations before being deployed and the ability to interact with their surroundings are among the key factors characterizing upcoming robots.

China’s Unitree Robotics is at the leading-edge of these developments with robots that can already run at over 10 kilometres per hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeQpz5ycInE

Similarly America’s Boston Dynamics has been heavily investing in these areas for years and years.

The question is that, if you have AI robots who can provide for all of our daily needs, what do we need humans for? Well, I find it neatly summarised in the phrase: trainers, maintainers and explainers.

Trainers are experts in the jobs to be done and help the machine to learn how to do those jobs;

Maintainers are also experts in the jobs to be done, but they are there to oversee the machines to ensure that the jobs they have been taught to do are done correctly; and

Explainers are key to helping those who do not understand what the machine is doing to understand it and how it could help their life or business.

As for the counsellors … well, they will need to train the robots how to do that; maintain the robot to keep doing that; and explain how the machines can do that.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PNPTlFDy1qA