Today’s inane image of the day:
I feel like everyone’s talking about AI taking jobs. It seems like the tech world has been impacted by the AI boom with reductions in force. I’ve heard that those that managed to keep their jobs are using AI-generated code in place of an entry-level coder. They are AI-augmented workers. It’s crazy to think that when I was growing up, computer programmers/software engineers had the most stable job prospects. After all, we rely so heavily on computers and the software that runs on them!
Growing up in an immigrant household with a scarcity mindset, it was always on my mind that I wanted to select a stable career. One that would always have stable job prospects. The typical teaching was that doctors, lawyers, and engineers would always have work. I think that even in this day and age of AI, this continues to ring somewhat true.
I was having a conversation with someone about AI and it came up that we will still always need judges. We will always need a human to render decisions based on the rules that we’ve set forth. That’s a very human job. So there are avenues for lawyers.
And we will always have physical products that need engineers to be part of the design/creation/maintenance.
But anyway, I’m a doctor, so I’m going to speak on the field I practice in.
Specifically, I am an anesthesiologist and an ICU physician. When I was deciding whether or not to do a fellowship after my anesthesiology residency, I actually opted for critical care medicine because I thought it was an insurance policy for if anesthesiologists were to become obsolete. One thing you should know about the field of anesthesia is that we’ve seen a lot of ups and downs over the last few decades. There was a time where anesthesiologists struggled to find work which then set the stage for a huge shortage of anesthesiologists so the pendulum swung dramatically the other way and people were being paid crazy salaries.
Currently, I believe we are in a bubble in the anesthesia market. The job market is so hot. There are some really nice salaries being offered. People have been jumping ship from groups because groups down the street are poaching them with more money for less work. Why would you pass up that offer?! But history tends to repeat itself so I am skeptical that the demand for anesthesia services will remain this high.
Either way, you came here to read a rant about how my job [the anesthesiologist part; maybe I’ll tackle the ICU part at a later date] is AI-proof. Apparently this Forbes list agrees with me. (The author should have investigated the difference between a nurse anesthetist and an anesthesiologist since CRNAs were #1 and we were #11 on this list. I’ll interpret this as because the training pathway to become an anesthesiologist is longer and more expensive, it fell lower on the list.) (Also of note, 7 out of the 20 on that list are medically-related so I guess those of us in medicine picked wisely!)
So… let’s get into it:
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