--- title: "These Strange Jobs Will Survive AI, Expert Says" description: "Many experts hold that generative AI will have sweeping effects on the job market. But how it will transform the workforce remains a debate." date: "2025-07-14" modified: "2025-07-14" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/strange-jobs-survive-ai-expert" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai jobs" - "artificial intelligence" - "generative ai" - "job automation" - "jobs" --- # These Strange Jobs Will Survive AI, Expert Says ![Many experts hold that generative AI will have sweeping effects on the job market. But how it will transform the workforce remains a debate.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Many experts hold that generative AI will have sweeping effects on the job market. But how exactly it will transform the workforce remains a subject of much debate. According to Adam Dorr, the director of research at tech forecast nonprofit RethinkX, we're risking putting all of humanity out of a job — and only some oddly specific occupations will survive a major transformation. "Technology has a new target in its crosshairs — and that's us," Dorr [told *The Guardian*](). "That’s our labor." According to the nonprofit exec, the cost of labor will drop precipitously. "We’ve seen that pattern before," Dorr told the newspaper. "If I can get the same thing or better for the same or lower cost, switching is a no-brainer. We’re the horses, we’re the film cameras." It's a foreboding prediction we've heard before. Experts have long warned that AI automation could greatly undermine the value of human labor. Earlier this month, for instance, MIT economist David Autor [warned]() in a podcast interview that AI could lead to a "Mad Max" scenario in which the job market becomes dominated by cheap and commoditized labor, a dystopian alternative to a "super-abundance" long touted by AI boosters. For his part, Dorr argued that "machines that can think are here, and their capabilities are expanding day by day with no end in sight," adding that "we don’t have that long to get ready for this." While countless jobs will be on the chopping block, he did flag an oddball assortment that he believes will weather the storm, including "sports coaches, politicians, sex workers, and ethicists." "There will remain a niche for human labour in some domains," he told *The Guardian*. "The problem is that there are nowhere near enough of those occupations to employ four billion people." Dorr isn't the only one arguing that certain professions could be safer than others from an AI revolution. During a June podcast appearance, "godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton [predicted]() that blue-collar jobs like plumbing will remain safe while careers in call centers or as paralegals could be in serious trouble. The scale of the shift could be enormous. Earlier this month, Ford CEO Jim Farley [predicted]() that AI "is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US." Of course, we should take Dodd's — and countless other experts' — predictions with a grain of salt. While executives are frothing at the mouth to start replacing costly human labor with AI, companies are [consistently stumbling over roadblocks]() brought on by the glitchy tech. And if a critical proportion of jobs *are* replaced by AI, it starts to raise questions about what the economy would even look like after that. Some CEOs are undeterred by those pesky questions. Even if "a lot of jobs go away" and their replacements seem "sillier and sillier looking from our current perspective," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman [argued last month]() that "we have always been really good at figuring out new things to do, and ways to occupy ourselves." Yet plenty of uncertainty remains, and Dorr is quite upfront about that himself. "I don’t have the answers," he told *The Guardian*. "We don’t even know if we have the right questions. We need to experiment now and try out new ownership structures, new stakeholder structures." **More on AI jobs:** *[CEOs Say AI Is Poised to Wipe Out an Astonishing Number of Jobs]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()