Turning thus around then, how to you improve your kids chances of surviving the ooh collapse? Lots of articles (like the one linked) talking about this, but not much solid advice.
My kids are 8 and 6. I try to fuel their imaginations, give them a broad understanding of the world, teach them to ask questions and solve problems. (whilst also doing more to save for their futures than I've ever managed to do for myself).
The hard thing about predicting the future is that it hasn't happened yet. Translation: my expertise is with a small slice of the past, not the future.
Other caveat - I would never take career advice from me. But to throw a few things out there.
Encourage expansive thinking. So "problem solving" can be reductive or expansive. In other words, you can "reduce" to a solution (patient exhibits these three symptoms; this happened, that happened and engine stopped). That sort of reductive problem solving won't need humans in the near future. Then there's expansive problem solving where you expand up to solutions: you have a board, some wire and a hammer, what can you build with these? I think this sort of problem solving will be AI assisted (generating options), but human-driven
Unpredictibility - mixing things that don't seem to go together. AI might excel at this because of pure horsepower, but the value of the practice will probably endure
Creative - it's going to be a long time until an AI can write a really compelling short story or novel, or create a painting that captures the imagination.
Flexibility - ability to change and adapt to circumstances. Obviously. I think parents pass that response to circumstances to their kids whether they want to or not.
Diversity - this is probably the top lesson that ecosystems show us. Life survives in hostile environments because of diversity. Any one trick might get automated today, but no four tricks are likely to get automated at the same time. Generally speaking, the top scholars I know who end up leading their fields and are the ultimate experts on a tiny slice of the knowledge turn out to be surprisingly diverse in their lives and hobbies and reading habits and the scholars I know who seem to have no other interests never seem to make it. So I think that's good advice for a happy life even in the absence of automation.
Human-centered. Music sharing destroyed revenue from recorded music in most cases, but a few years ago Springsteen sold out a tour at $200 a ticket min because people want an authentic experience of another human being. We see this in photography. It is almost impossible to make a living selling photos anymore, but people will pay a lot of money to do workshops with photographers who will take them to a cool place and teach them how to photograph it. So whereas record sales and photo sales were the main income and concerts and wokshops were promotional, now the recorded song and image have almost no value, but the in-person experience does. So always be looking for what it is that you can provide that cannot be provided virtually. In other words, being people that have something to offer and a disposition that makes them nice to be with, will probably count for more than, say, programming skills, in 10-20 years.
And again... I don't have kids, have spent my life studying the past not the future and would be one of the last people I would go to for career advice.... And with that I'll leave it to you to assess the value of those comments :-)
