AI.

I agree about renovation. On the other hand I expect robotics to make big strides into the new build housing business. Aside from 3d printing in concrete there are already robots that can lay brickwork. It's not difficult to imagine a situation where electrics and plumbing come to the site pre-asembeled in frames that slot into the walls / floors and only need a human to connect them to each other and fixtures. So a robot lays the bricks, slots in frames, puts in the floors, then humans comes and connects bits up and puts in fixtures like switches and sinks etc. Basically all the building work upto and including putting the roof on could be done by robots soon.

After 34 years working in different areas of IT support, I can confirm that this is becoming more and more replaced by AI as well - so I took the opportunity to get out of IT all together and move into an area that this can't touch for quite some time.

I'm renovating old properties that have been untouched for many decades and returning them to their original character but with all mod cons built in (insulation, new wiring, new plumbing, efficient heating, double glazing units in origina stlye windows, high speed internet & WiFi etc).

Robotics that are capable to work in this sort of situation are a long way off yet due to the complexity of what you find as you strip off the old layers of wall covering, flooring and infrastructure.

I estimate that the demand for property from population growth will outstrip the job losses from AI for at least my remaining working life.

As for people joining the work force or in their first decades in it, you should think ahead and steer your career to something that is really hard for a clueless penny pinching manager to take away from you by giving it to some AI project.

Or get a job repairing the AI sysetms when the unemployed staff take their revenge on it...

Have you ever tried to use an AI? I have. It sucks. The more spicific you make your requests the worse it gets. If you type in 4k dancing polar bears. You’ll get great art of dancing polar bears. But if you say dancing polar bears waving umbrellas you’ll not get that. You might get a picture with polar bears and umbrellas but often the bear won’t be holding it and they won’t be waving them. These art ais seem to have no concept of relationships between objects or objects acting on other objects.

sure AI art may help people cut corners. Using the AI to generate bits of images then photoshop tools to composite them. And people are working on AIs that can redraw things in new styles, so maybe if all you can manage is a cartoon you can draw that and have the AI redo it in a realistic style. But the human element of understanding the arrangement and relationship between objects still seems nessicery.

as for bots like chat gtp this guy does a good video on why they won’t be replacing programers any time soon. https://youtu.be/q2A-MkGjvmI

the people this might hurt are the copywriters. Taking a technical report and rewriting it as a press release. Or a press release and rewriting it as a news article. Yep AI is good at that now. 

One of the platforms I work on is closing down because AI got too good at writing. Yay.

On the other hand, work has finally picked up again after the winter break on the other platforms.