The careers that will survive the AI revolution – and pay the highest salary
Like it or not, artificial intelligence is coming for your job. Seemingly overnight, the software has crept into the workplace, and once highly-paid workers are already seeing salaries slip and vacancies dry up.
But the dawn of AI has also birthed hitherto unthought-of job titles. On LinkedIn, “head of AI” job roles have tripled globally in the last five years, while job posts mentioning AI have more than doubled in Britain in the last two.
Nearly a third of British business leaders expect the software will lead to new roles, and roughly half of British workers believe AI will impact their jobs in some way in the next five years, according to a study by PwC. Earlier this year, BT announced it would cut 55,000 jobs, and replace a fifth of its workers with AI.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs globally in the coming years.
In the near future, customer service phone lines could be answered by a robot, while graphic designers, computer programmers, writers and teachers may well find their roles consumed, at least in part, by software. Some companies have married AI with hologram technology, replacing in-person customer service with digital avatars.
At a summit last year, Elon Musk told Rishi Sunak that artificial intelligence could one day eradicate the need for jobs altogether. The owner of X, formally Twitter, told The Prime Minister AI would be “the most disruptive force in the industry for jobs”, claiming that “there will come a point where no job is needed – you can have a job if you want to for personal satisfaction”.
Mr Sunak likewise urged industry figureheads and politicians “not to be alarmist” about the rapid rise of AI, while denying the technology would be a threat to jobs. “I know this is an anxiety people have,” he said. “We should look at AI more as a co-pilot than something that is necessarily going to replace someone’s job.”
Nonetheless, trade unions are worried. Andrew Pakes, Deputy General Secretary of Prospect, which has over 150,000 members, said the Government’s attempts to regulate AI were being outpaced by the technology’s rapid development. “AI brings with it opportunities for better work but it also threatens jobs and has the potential to exacerbate prejudices in recruitment and disciplinary processes,” he said.
Which careers are safest from AI?
Though some previously lucrative careers are already feeling the rapid encroachment of smart software, some careers may be safe.
Using studies published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the University of Pennsylvania, and research by Goldmann Sachs, data analysts at job search engine Adzuna identified several job roles where pay had been resilient to the advent of AI – and ranked them by how high their advertised salaries were in December 2023.
Specialist medical professionals ranked among the highest-paid roles best insulated from the march of technology, according to advertised salaries on Adzuna.
The average salary for orthodontists was £113,576 a year in December, compared to £102,842 last year – an increase of 10.4pc.
Oncologists, pediatricians, surgeons, and midwives also ranked highly, with advertised salaries ranging from £55,000 to £100,000.
However, the average pay for some roles has dipped year-on-year.
Pay across listed vacancies for oncologists had dropped by 8.4pc, from £219,755 to £201,243, Adzuna said. Meanwhile, pay for midwives dipped by 10.8pc – from £58,864 to £52,490. Advertised salaries had skyrocketed over the summer as hospitals desperately tried to fill the gaps left by an exodus of midwives during the pandemic.
Jobs requiring subjective reasoning, including judges and politicians, were similarly deemed safe from the AI revolution.
MPs are paid £86,584 a year, and while judge vacancies are not advertised on jobsites, they can expect to earn salaries far in excess of £100,000. Adzuna listed 546 vacancies for chief executive positions in December – and average pay had risen by 15.1pc year-on-year – from £78,916 to £90,868.
Elsewhere, the jobsite said society would be reluctant to accept jobs involving “human stories or motivation”, such as influencers, therapists, or life coaches, being performed by AI. Pay rose fractionally in all three cases, and the number of listed vacancies for the latter jumped from just five to 63.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, manual labour was also deemed safe from automation. Blue-collar jobs including oil rigging, and pipelaying (average salary £44,448), mechanics (£42,862) and plumbers (£39,039) dominated the list. Roofers, crane drivers, and carpenters also ranked highly.
Even as companies embracing AI futures replace swathes of their workforce, the presence of the software is expected to generate jobs specifically geared around monitoring its use.
Prompt engineers, AI ethics officers, and AI auditors are expected to be common job roles in the near future, Adzuna said in June.
By December, a number of such roles had already started cropping up on job boards. These roles included “machine manager”, “AI trainer”, and “prompt engineer”, for which the advertised salary was £192,000.
In the US, the AI job market is booming: a study by marketing publication Biz Report found that AI-related jobs offered 77pc higher salaries than other occupations, while the pay gap between tech jobs and other occupations had widened by 36pc due to AI. At the tail end of 2023, almost a third of all tech jobs were AI-related, the study found.
Workers are already steeling themselves for a word of work alongside artificial intelligence. LinkedIn has seen an 80pc increase in members watching AI-related learning courses over the last three months, and a 60pc increase in generative AI skills – such as Chat GPT and prompt crafting – being added to users’ profiles every month since January 2023.
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This article was first published on November 3, 2023, and has since been updated.
