When my sons were younger I suggested to them that they consider learning skilled trades, things that couldn’t practically be outsourced to an underdeveloped country or economically replaced with automation. I still think that’s good advice, though most of them did their own things and ignored it — perhaps wisely, it turned out. One is an honest-to-goodness computer genius who has left me far behind, one a doctor, another a public policy administrator and hyper-educated wonk, one a cop, and one — the only one who went in the direction I suggested (if probably of his own accord) — a factory machine technician. (It’s this last son, the youngest of the five, with whom I have the most in-depth and enjoyable work conversations, since we both deal with automation, albeit from different ends.)

My youngest child, Darling Daughter, works in a Big City for a subsidiary of some semi-notorious financial company (Black-something, though I can never remember what). She’s the one I was thinking of tonight on my long drive to a client’s location for a few days of on-site software integration. I listened, on the drive, to some discussions of modern AI, and that got me thinking about how, and if, AI is likely to impact their careers in the near future.